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452 LETTERS IN CANADA 1983 long grey beard and glitterin' eye", well, I would have blushed to the roots of my hair - if that had been a physical possibility' (pp 105-6). More often the poet's self-commentary strengthens and clarifies the general impressions made on us by the poetry: as for example when he asserts that 'dynamos, lathes, drills, and turbines are just as much material for poetry as lilies and carnations and cuckoos ...,' and that 'Science has always been to me ... a form of poetry' (pp 24-26). Or when, in his vivid account of the writing of The Roosevelt and the Antinoe, he takes us with him aboard the Roosevelt, resting in New York harbour, and shows how he brought that great sea-rescue drama alive for himself, through painstaking study and on-the-scenes re-enactment, before he was able to do the same for us, in what may well be his finest single poem. Occasionally in a phrase or two he can take us with startling simplicity into the centre of his poetic imagination: 'the more we find ourselves in the presence of sacrificial deeds, the closer we get to the heart of life and the heart of the universe' (p 128). At least once Pratt raises doubts about the accuracy of his comments, though evidently not in Gingell's mind. She writes on p xxvii: 'To have the context of the lyric "Come Not the Seasons Here" fixed by Pratt's simple comment that it was "a picture ofa countryside devastated by war" (61) is most helpful.' I would have said the reverse: that Pratt is here being unhelpful- avoiding an answer that might reveal the poem to be about a more personal graveside grief. There may be other instances in which a reader would be advised to trust the poem, not the commentary, even when both are by Pratt. Butit is still abundantly true, as Gingell's excellent overview concludes, that 'there are few poems and virtually no aspects of Pratt's poetic process that are not in some way illuminated by his comments in the addresses, interviews, and introductions collected here: (F.W. WAIT) Sandra Djwa and R. St). Macdonald, editors. On F.R. Scott; Essays on His Contributions to Law, Literature, and Politics McGill-Queen's University Press xxii, 203. $25.00 cloth, $8.95 paper To avoid all error as to the pOint of view, let me say in commencing that I am a Liberal Conservative, or, if you will, a Conservative Liberal with a strong dash of sympathy with the Socialist idea, a friend of Labour, and a believer in Progressive Radicalism. Stephen Leacock, The Hohenzallerns in America: with the Bolsheviks in Berlin and Other Impossibilities (1919) 'Beloved elder of Canadian liberalism: 'democratic socialist: 'centralist: 'realist: 'compassionate rebel: 'civil libertarian: 'Canadian nationalist and anti-imperialist': these are some of the assessments of F.R. Scott in this very diverse collection of conference papers. 'Largely the revised proceedings' (p ix) of the 1981 Scott Conference in Vancouver at which the poet-lawyer-teacher was himself present, On F.R. Scott contains a predictable and appropriate amount of praise, some of it on the fulsome side of flattery. (Louis Dudek: Frank Scott is 'the Canadian poet whom I would place at the top as the clearest poetic voice of this century in Canada: p 43.) Yet there is truth to the assertions of Sandra Djwa and Therese Casgrain that F.R. Scott is a 'rare' (p ix) and a 'great' (p 5) Canadian, a figure whose contributions to the fields of literature, law, and politics are well worth the serious scrutiny and contextual placement provided by this useful, important, and well-balanced book. Despite Djwa's lengthy and informative overview of its contents in the Introduction, On F.R. Scott makes no claim to be truly interdisciplinary in its approach to a man whose several careers do indeed, as Walter Tarnopolsky observes in 'F.R. Scott: Civil Libertarian' (p 133), make it difficult to discuss in isolation his contribution to any single area; rather, it offers seventeen essays 'grouped by topic' (p ix) - 'the Man: 'the Poet,' 'Politics: and so...

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