Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part Eleven -Section Two by Dave Jaffe

         The Poet as Nice Person - Second Section


       "It's a good course," a student I knew at McGill University told me about the course he was taking with Louis Dudek in the early 1960's. Dudek was known as a good teacher. He was also a nice guy who did many favours and good deeds for people.
     Dudek was born in Montreal in 1918 and died in 2001. He came of age in the 1930's during the Great Depression, and like many people back then he  was poor. His parents both came from Poland and they couldn't afford to keep their son in school.
     Dudek dropped out of school for a while and went to work. Later he went back to school and entered McGill University which he graduated from in 1939. Then he travelled south to New York City and ended up at Columbia Universuity. Here he got a Ph.D. in English literature.
    "Optimism and anxiety flavoured the 1950's," wrote historians Robert Bothwell and J.L. Granatstein . "The economy 'boomed' and expectations 'soared'."
    Still,  many Canadians at the time streamed south to live in the United States. Others like writers Mordecai Richler and Mavis Gallant went across the Atlantic to Europe. Gallant went to live in France, while Richler ended up in London, England. Yet Louis Dudek came back to Canada to teach English literature at McGill University. He taught there for the rest of his working life.
     Dudek came under the influence of the great American poet Ezra Pound and much of the poetry he wrote was impacted by Pound's poems. "Old Ez," as Pound used to call himself, was born in Idaho, lived in Europe for many years and helped found modern American poetry. Dudek loved Pound's poetry but there was a problem. Pound was a traitor who supported the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in World war two. He appeared on Italian radio praising Mussolini while the U.S. was at war with Italy.
    After the war Pound was imprisoned in Washington, D.C., and Dudek often went to see him there. Dudek said a number of times in effect, "Pound wrote some great poetry especially his 'Cantos'."
Yet Dudek remained a liberal and certainly never supported fascism or the anti-semitism that Pound often expressed.
    In the 1950's, he and poet Irving Layton broke off their friendship. A short rambunctious man and well-known poet, Layton attacked Dudek in some of his essays. Dudek didn't respond.
      Dudek helped many poets and often praised younger poets. "There are dozens of writers and publishers who owe him so much," said publisher Simon Dardick of Dudek. Dudek was another poet who was a nice person who did good things for people.