XP PESTIVAL MUNDIAL
Of L 4 JUVENTUD Y LOS
ESTUDIANTES MAB ANA CUBA 1978

11th Festival

applications

Applications are now being
received to attend the World Youth
Festival, July'28 - August 5, 1978 in
Havana, Cuba.

Between 300 and 500 Canadians
are expected to attend the Festival
that will bring together 20,000
young people from over 140
countries around the theme of
peace, solidarity and friendship.

Total cost for each delegate will
be around $500. The fee will include
costs of return travel from main
points of origin, internal tran-
sportation in Cuba, all registration
fees and food and lodging for the
Festival and up to an extra week in
Cuba.

Applications will be received and
reviewed by the Canadian
Preparatory Committee for the
Eleventh World Youth Festival.
For applications -and information
write the Committee at Box 65804,
Stn F, Vancouver.

Introducing the 1978

NORMAN BETHUNE
MARXIST CLASSROOM SERIES

commencing January 4, 1978
and continuing for 6 weeks

you are invited to attend
any one, or all, of the following classes

Janyary_4
“EUROCOMMUNISM”’

with Maurice Rush
provincial leader, Communist Party

In one of his rare comments
about the social conscience of the
writer, the great Chilean poet
Pablo Neruda wrote these words,
in reference to the struggle of the
Soviet people to build socialism in
their country:

“How . . . can one fail to fall in
step with such a profound and far-
flung revolution? How can one
exclude from one’s central themes
the victories, conflicts, human
problems, abundances, progress,
growth, of an immense country
facing a total change in political
economic and social systems? How
can one not take common cause
with a people battered by ferocious
invasions, hemmed in by im-
placable colonialists, obscurantists
of every stripe and color?”

Sadly, though Latin America can
point to a score or more poets who
have fervently taken up Neruda’s
challenge — Nicolas Guillen of
Cuba, Juan Gelman of Argentina,
Jaime Labastida of Mexico among
others — the major contemporary
figures in the poetry of this country
have turned their back on it, fin-
ding no inspiration in either the
struggles of their own people or
those of other countries. Modern
Canadian poetry has been robbed
of what has long been the greatest
gift of the poet — the ability to fire
the imagination with a vision of
change and renewal.

Yet there are poets in this
country whose themes are drawn
from the ‘‘victories, conflicts,
growth and progress’’ of people
struggling to change the world;
poets who, although they do not
have access to prestigious
publishers or costly promotion, are

nevertheless reaching a responsive .

January 1]
“‘A NEW DEAL FOR:
CANADA’S NATIVE PEOPLES”’

with Ben Swankey
labor journalist and author

January_18
“LEVESQUE AND
CANADIAN UNITY—

with Dave Fairey
labor economist and consultant

ONE YEAR LATER”

Janyary_25 |
“FREEDOM IN THE SOCIALIST WORLD”

with Fred Wilson
journalist, Pacific Tribune

February_1
“DECADENCE AND CULTURE”

with Sean Griffin
editor, Pacific Tribune

Febryary 8
“NEW PERSPECTIVES FOR
THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT”

with Jack Phillips
chairman, Communist Party labor committee

All classes begin at 8 p.m. and will be held in the library,
Britannia Centre, 1661 Napier St., Vancouver
Classes in New Westminster will begin January 8

—watch for further details

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—DECEMBER 9, 1977—Page 6

SOU TAU ATT ARE ABR AT

lu cal \ “it wll

PAUL BUNYAN AND _ OTHER
POEMS. By Harold Griffin. The
Commonwealth Fund, 1977. Paper
$3.50, cloth $6.50.

and growing audience. And among
them, the voice of Harold Griffin,
whose third volume of poetry, Paul
Bunyan and Other Poems has just
appeared, rings most clearly.

That the name of Neruda should
appear in a review of Griffin’s new
work is appropriate in another
way. In a sense, his title poem,
“Paul Bunyan”, brings the epic
vision of Neruda’s ‘‘Let the
Railsplitter Awake”’ to Canada and
to British Columbia. Like the Abe
Lincoln of Neruda’s poem Griffin’s
Bunyan is a symbol, a legendary
hero who embodies the will of the
people to recover their alienated
heritage. But that will must first be
aroused:

Get up Paul Bunyan
break the bonds
they fastened on you

while you slept,
the forest for your blanket
in the snow.

Shake the windfalls

from your hair,
the log jams from your lfeet,
take your axe
and let us go.

How much longer must you be
a hewer of wood for others
in your native land? :

But there the comparisons with
Neruda should end for Griffin’s
poem is uniquely Canadian. The
images are those of the rough
British Columbia landscape; the
mythical Bunyan who logged out
that landscape symbolizes the real
flesh-and-blood loggers, the
countless, nameless men who, like
Bunyan, have been dispossessed in
the land they built.

The great strength of the poem,
however, is in its vision — in
Griffin’s affirmation of ‘‘the
profound and far-flung revolution”’
of which Neruda spoke. His Paul
Bunyan is more than a hero with
historical roots. He is also a
revolutionary symbol. And across
the Bering Sea, his Siberian
counterpart, the legendary Sar-
taktei, points the way to the future:
Listen,
can you hear?

Beyond these misted Islands,
storm-swept outposts,

of our western boundary..
in far Siberia

you can hear

the crash of rendered rock.

Author Harold Griffin (left) autographs copies of his new volume of
poetry for Paul Lawrence at the People’s Co-Op Bookstore Friday.

This is where

Sartaktei transforms his tcpiaiia=
Come, Paul Bunyan

your labors are not yet done.
Take your axe,

summon your crew,
Canadians all

in their alienated heritage,
no longer need you be

a hewer or wood for others
in your native land.

That link with past and present,
also finds expression in two other
poems, ‘‘Where are the Honors”
written in honor of the MacKenzie-
Papineau Battalion veterans on the
occasion of Spanish dictator

_Franco’s death; and ‘‘Betrayal” in

which Griffin weaves an intricate
poetic connection between the 1837
uprising in the Canadas and the
events, both present and past, in
Chile. .

But it is also from the conflicts of
contemporary events that Griffin
draws some of his most compelling
lines. For those who have watched
with growing anger the headlines
telling the story of the layoffs at
International Nickel in Sudbury,
these lines from the poem
“Multinational” will have a power
which goes far beyond their poetic
beauty:

Tomorrow the chute blaster
with the ailing wife and

two boys
to whom this bleak landscape
of rock and stunted fir
is home, even a place

of austere beauty
in the first unblemished ce

“WORK

AND

WAGES”!

A

Semi-Decumentary Account

Arthur H. (Slim)
EVANS

ESR IGE

Carpenter, Miner.

Labor Leader

Ben Steankey oe Jean Evans Sheils

meet
BEN SWANKEY and

JEAN EVANS SHEILS
(daughter of Art Evans)
authors of
“WORK AND WAGES”
$9.95
at an autographing party
at the

SATURDAY, DEC. 10th
12 NOON TO 4:00 P.M.

PEOPLE’S COOP BOOKSTORE

Just published

and associate .. . $3.95

$13.95

relevant theory,

NERUDA’S MEMOIRS,
Chile’s world renowned Communist poet...

Marxism-Leninism, Moscow .. .

the tram man supporting
his aging parents in Hamilton,
the mucker whose signature
is barely dry on the
mortgage papers —
all will learn that
their jobs
have been exported to Guatamala
where the profits they produced
already have preceded them.
There are many other works of
note in this collection: among

them, ‘(We Came as Strangers”
with its lingering, evocative
images of nature; ‘‘Aladdin’s

Lamp” which sustains the simple
but effective metaphor of the

famous genie and the recently-

nationalized oil wealth of a new
Iraq; and ‘‘Sightings” with its
brief, captivating lines. Less
successful are two of the shorter
poems — ‘‘Gold’”’ and “‘I Would Not
Let You Go” lack the originality of
theme and imagery evident
elsewhere — but these are minor
shortcomings.

With his two previous volumes of

poetry, Confederation and Other
Poems (1966) and Now and Not
Now (1973), Griffin established a
reputation as a poet of some note,
not only in this country but abroad
as his verse has been translated
into several languages including

Russian and Arabic. With this.

latest work, that reputation is
assured. These are poems to read,
to savor — and above all, to learn
from. They are available now, at
$3.50 for the paperback edition,
from the ahguate oe Bookstore.

PAUL BUNYAN AND OTHER POEMS by Harold — a
Griffin paperback $3.50 cloth $6.50.

KARL MARX, biographical memoirs by William
Liebknecht. The classic biography by Marx’ s friend

the remembrances of
cloth

THE EDUCATION OF EVERETT RICHARDSON
The Nova Scotia Fishermen’s Strike 1970-1971, by
Silver Donald Cameron $4.95

LENINISM AND THE NATIONAL QUESTION
by the

Institute of
cloth $4.95

Come and see us at the

PEOPLE’S CO-OP BOOKSTORE

353 West Pender Street
Vancouver
685-5836

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