The winter 2005 issue of SONNETTO POESIA features Eric Linden's garland of sonnets, "Halifax Explosion 1917". We have chosen to publish this remarkable garland of sonnets in this particular issue because, like the invasion of Pearl Harbour on Dec. 7 1941, this is one of the great wartime events in history, and it too took place in the winter. The Halifax explosion is one of the major events of World War I and indeed of the history of human warfare. This explosion, which killed over 2,000 people in the City of Halifax, and levelled huge areas of the core of the city, was the largest man-made explosion in the history of the world prior to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945. When the munitions ship, the S.S. Montcalm, caught fire in Halifax harbour on the morning of Dec. 6 1917, exactly as recorded in these sonnets, the resulting explosion was so horrific it produced a MUSHROOM cloud. The only thing that contra distinguishes this horrendous explosion from those in Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost 38 years later is the fact that this explosion was not atomic. Fortunately, there was no fallout; otherwise, the death toll would have been even more catastrophic. But there was another kind of fallout that came hard on the heels of this horrible disaster, a dreadful snowstorm, one of the worst that hit Halifax in years. That snowstorm only added to the fatalities, the casualties and misery the citizens of Halifax had to endure that awful, cold winter of 1917.
To get a fuller picture for yourself of the real extent of the horrific damage this immense explosion caused, visit the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)'s Halifax Disaster page, here:
In light of E.J. Pratt's dramatic elegy alone, Eric Linden's own garland of sonnets must also command our greatest respect as a truly memorable landmark in the annals of Canadian maritime historical poetry. In fact, these two poems alone appear to stand out as the most significant poems of their kind in Canadian poetry history. What really hits home when as one reads through Eric Linden's sonnet sequence is the striking similarity between his garland of sonnets as a factual story and E.J. Pratt's equally factual "Titanic" (1935). Both poems are maritime and part and parcel of Canadian history. Both poems are based strictly on fact. This is all the more amazing since, so far as this editor can tell, there is simply no other garland of sonnets in existence which is based entirely on historical events. That alone makes these 15 sonnets a notable event in English, let alone, Canadian poetry.
But there is more. What really astounded me as I read Eric Linden's sonnets is the amazing similarity in style and metrics between E.J. Pratt's "Titanic" and his own sonnets. Now, this is all the more remarkable, in so far as Eric himself recently admitted to me he was not even aware of the "Titanic" epic when he wrote his sonnets. That took me aback. Is this a matter of mere literary co-incidence, is it serendipity, or are we indeed witnessing here the furtherance of a Canadian literary tradition, firmly established in E.J. Pratt's stunning poem, and consummately followed through in Eric Linden's own poems as a maritime story? I leave it to you to judge for yourselves.
Comparing even a few verses from E.J. Pratt's "Titanic" (1935) and Eric Linden's "Halifax Explosion" (2003) brings the stylistic and structural parallels into stark relief. Allow me to cite just three examples in support of my conclusion that we are here witnessing the continuance in the twenty-first century of the tradition of Canadian maritime poetry in the twentieth century:
E.J. Pratt:
(describing the iceberg that would doom the "Titanic")
But with an impulse governed by the raw
Mechanics of its birth, it drifted where
Ambushed, fog-grey, it stumbled on its lair,
North forty-one degrees and forty-four,
Fifty and fourteen west the longitude,...
Eric Linden:
Sonnet 2 (SS Mont Blanc)
Her cargo manifest read like a book
Of horror tales.
E.J. Pratt:
(describing the break-up of the "Titanic")
Another bulkhead crashed, then following
The passage of the engines as they tore
From their foundations, taking everything...
Eric Linden:
Sonnet 7 (Explosion)
At 9:05 - eruptions filled the air,
Mont Blanc exploded from her cargo borne.
Two thousand people died that moment, too;
E.J. Pratt:
(continues from the preceding passage...)
The passage of the engines as they tore
From their foundations, taking everything
Clean through the bows from 'midships with a roar
Which drowned all cries upon the deck and shook
The watchers in the boats, the liner took
Her thousand fathoms journey to her grave.
Eric Linden:
Sonnet 9 (Halifax Flattened)
In splinters lay a city - thousands died.
... Gone the peaceful dawn.
Now, of course, it is up to you, our readers, to familiarize yourselves with the dramatic texts of these two great maritime stories, both of which plunge us "in medias res". The tragic parallels between these two great stories will raise your eyebrows. The loss of lives in both cases was horrendous: Titanic 1,503 dead, Halifax over 2,000. Both stories are bound to leave you breathless with their gripping drama!
Richard Vallance
December 15 2004
