An him go foh goofy babes,
buff jobs,
strappin' straw saunabone blondies
"In Guildenstern County"

In a poem it boasts all colours of the sun.
Like a bronze pope, it salutes no one.
"Rune"

The classroom windows of Laird Hall overlook the enormous campus green of John Abbott College where for thirty years students have sprawled on the grass in the late August sun to perpetuate summer. Some twenty years ago, I gazed out one of those windows waiting for the first class of Introduction to Modern Poetry to start. After five minutes the restlessness of the students abated as a rumbling voice proceeded down the hall toward the classroom door. "à Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man ..." Peter van Toorn entered the classroom reading from a worn leather bound bible, eyes fixed on the page, not once looking up, not conceding the presence of the students. He continued to read, "à And I will set my face against that man, and will make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off à" A handful of students left the class, skulking as close to the wall as possible, sneaking out the door, acknowledged by a slight nod of the uninterrupted voice's head. My heart poundedùwas thrilled and, honestly, terrified. After reading for at least a full hour, Peter slammed the Bible shut, said something that I can't clearly recallùperhaps, "Now, that's poetry, man!"ùand returned whence he came, the voice silenced, black Chinese slippers shuffling on their brick-coloured soles. For those students with an open and rebellious spirit, Peter van Toorn was a brilliant mentor with an astounding breadth of knowledge, wild leaps of reference, and an infinite capacity to spice erudition with vulgarity. For those with a conventional sensibility, Peter van Toorn was a threatening subversive to be avoided.

A number of Peter's students became devoted. Peter thrives on an audience for his streams of consciousness that leap in and out of the sacred and the profane. His metaphors for poetry can be pornographic and profound in the same breath. Something comes to mind about a ribald exegesis on the erotic implications of a line of verse being akin to a farmer's plough cutting back and forth through a fresh fieldùrefreshing insights on the Latin root of the word "verse".

Yet, during those years, Peter complemented these verbal games with a surprising, plainspoken practicality. I once invited him to visit our farm outside Maxville. As I recall, it was early fall; the Herefords were grazing, the hay had been harvested, the alfalfa was bright green against the bronze stubs of the hay. At that time of the year, the groundhogs expanded their network of tunnels and holes putting the cattle at risk for broken legs. My father, my uncle, Peter and I set out to hunt a few of the groundhogs in the back field, where the pond fed tall, healthy grass and the holes were disguised. My uncle somewhat recklessly held his Remington 3030 like a tennis racket. Peter looked closely at him and smiled, cigarette dangling from the right side of his mouth. In the most polite, constructive tone, Peter asked whether it might be a good idea to keep the gun pointed safely at the ground. My uncle acceded to his request but, stumbling, shot the top off an alfalfa plant, sent the cattle stampeding to the pond, and the groundhogs underground, extinguishing any opportunity for an afternoon hunt. Peter must have jumped a good two feet, straight up.

Peter van Toorn was not a presentable professor of poetry that I was wise to bring home to the farm. My mother still speaks of meeting him with discomfort and unease. She knew that we shared substances, lounges and off-colour behaviours that were superfluous to his mentorship in verse. But I have a persistent affection for Peter van Toorn because of his extreme humanity. And I owe him an immense debt for sharing with me a way of living that was the epitome of the poFte maudit. His wild aspect is as necessary to his characterùand his workùas hydrogen is to the sun; take away his unconventional imagination or his desire to shock, and you take away an element that is critical to the intellectual and spiritual fire that has brought into being some of his finest poems. But, then, there is no more reason to expect our poets to put sociability before vision than there is to expect our captains of industry to put kindness before profits.

This fall, I visited Peter on the way home from a trip to Montreal. We played chess in his kitchen. After being trounced in the first game, I was able to stalemate him, retreating with my solitary king from his king and bishop. He read a few of his unpublished poems; we talked about the content of the new release of Mountain Tea. We talked for twelve hours. At about four in the morning, we drove up to Chenoy's where we closed the night with a smoke and a smoked meatùit was far too late and far too dangerous to buy more beer. After we drove home, he walked his dogs and came back into the house with undiminished energy. I dozed for a couple of hours on the sofa before driving back to Ottawa. Falling in and out of sleep, I asked Peter if he would mind showing me the new film, "Ode to a Sparrow", a short documentary on his life and work. There you can see him, running his nicotine-stained fingers through his dark brown hairùwhich still has not a trace of grey despite his fifty-seven years. He stands in his unkempt kitchen, cigarette in his right hand, talking of the sacrifice required to finish Mountain Tea, of stealing the time to write from sleep. He still steals time from sleep; when I have the pleasure of his company, I gladly steal it with him. ò

Stephen Brockwell's most recent book of poems is Cometology.