Taking It to the Letter by George Woodcock (review)

460 LETTERS IN CANADA 1981 by their absence, but these have been interviewed often enough before. The value of this collection is that it shows the variety of poetic activity the different assumptions, methods, and attitudes - healthily jostling for attention in the current poetic scene. To a considerable extentinterviews depend for their success on the skill of the interviewer, and Jon Pearce (who teaches at Upper Canada College - do his students realize how lucky they are?) is very skilful indeed. His most obvious merit is a negative one: unlike some recent compilers of similar books, he eschews any temptation to be clever or journalistically flippant. He has obviously done his homework - a bit too self-consciously , perhaps, at times - and asks similar questions ofall his poets. He is especially interested in the organic unity of their work, in their concern with technique (particularly line lengths, changes of diction, and their opinions on the respective merits of regular and free verse), in their acknowledged influences (Canadian and non-Canadian, literary and extra-literary). As a result, we can compare and contrast the answers of different poets, and the book gains a cumulative coherence. Compilations such as this perform the useful function of bringing the poets closer to their readers, and if, as I suspect, Twelve Voices creates greater interest in some who have not yet received the recognition that is their due (I'm thinking especially of Brewster, Helwig, and Marshall), it will have been well worth the effort. The responses can be surprisingly revealing, sometimes of individual character (Musgrave: 'I read [Tennyson 'sICollected Works when Iwas quite young. Istill remember some ofthe lines'), sometimes of the intellectual habits of a whole generation (Wayman: 'I had never read anyAmerican literature ... at u.B.C. becauseat that time it was just not taught'). In the majority ofcases, however, one is impressed by the dedication and earnestness of the participants.Through these glimpses into the poets' workshops, we can learn much about the 'infinite variety' of the creative principle. Above all, these poets are for the most part serious without being in any way pretentious. After reading through Twelve Voices most readers will be inclined to agree with Gwendolyn MacEwen: 'I have every kind of faith in Canadian literature. I think some very, very interesting things are happening: (w.,. KEITH) George Woodcock. Taking It to the Letter Quadrant. 159. $7.95 paper George Woodcock remarks in his preface that this 'frankly selective' grouping of his letters shows 'something of the literary community in Canada as it exists in human terms' and depicts it 'with an inner eye: Interestingly, his correspondence suggests that the eye which affords such a privileged view of writers like Atwood, Birney, Engel, Laurence, HUMANITIES 461 Layton, MacLennan, Purdy, and A.J.M. Smith is also that of an outsider. Amaverick individualistand libertarian who sometimesimperilled friendships on the telephone then gracefully repaired them by letter, Woodcock envied 'theeremite's ability to get away ... from it all' to suchan exent that, as editor of Canadian Literature in Vancouver, he sequestered himself from 'the cBcers: the universities, and 'the lit. types' of Toronto. 'I grow more and more reclusive: he wrote to Margaret Atwood in 1976, and in 1979 he rejected the suggestion that he was part of 'the Establishment': 'I still see the Establishmentas a "they" that interferes with mylife.' Commentingon his 'desire for detachment: he wrote to Al Purdy: 'There's a monk .. . in all of us.' Energetic, warm, tactful, witty, but sometimes clouded by gloom and testiness, Woodcock's letters provide fascinating glimpses of 'the writer's life in Canada': the unstable world of small magazines and presses; the politics of tlie Writers' Union; the struggle against narrow literary nationalism and the tyranny of the CBC; the need to protect and promote writers of modest fame; the battle to achieve support and immunity from that capricious 'institutional patron' the Canada Council. The letters show Woodcock in a variety of moods and paint the portrait of an obsessively busy, self-educated indivi.dualist, 'active beyond reason: an anarchist deeply committed to the cause of letters and frankly distrustful of'thefollies and deceptions ofmajoritarian democracy: A 'diffuse man of letters: his...