Letters in Canada: 1945

j , '. · : · ·.· I · \ ' LETTERS IN CANADA: 1945 Edited by A. S. P. WooDHOUSE .PA.RT I:' EN'GLISH-~ANADIAN LETTERS THIS is the tenth annual survey of Letters in Canada. vVith it the task ' undertaken in-1936 is completed: the examin~tion of Canadian writing for a decade, year by year. The continuation of "Letters in Ca~ada,'' and the form that, if it is contin~ed,· it shall takeJ will be considered by the -Advisory Board. Pressure of other duties (which have this year made the 'production of the survey almost impossible) will certainly necessitate some reorganization ·and the ap·poi_ ntment of -a new editor. Of the utility of '~Letters in Canada" it is difficult for those who have planned or produced it to judge, and unfitting for -them to speak. -It is p~rmi ssible, however, to reassert the honesty of the purpose which inspired it, and the determi-· nation to judge the works presented without fear or favour. As will have been apparent, this purpose has furnished the common ground between the different reviewers. There has been no attempt to impose a,policy or to conceal differenc~s in point of view. Two of the princip~l- revi~wers have been .with us from the first, or almost from the first, Professor E. K. Brown, who shared in the original _ planning of the survey, and Professor .J. R. MacGillivray, who took over the criticism of Fiction in the second issue'. To them, and the.other reviewers, such success as '"Letters in Canada" has attained has been due-to them and to Mrs. Hewitt and her helpers and successors ih the Editorial Office of the University Press, who compiled _ the lists on which editor and ·reviewers worked. The length of this year's survey has necessitated our reveHing to an exp ~dient which we have used before: we are holding "French-Canadian Letters" and ••New-Canadian Letters'' for the July issue. E. K. BROWN Those of us who have watched for the appearance of Mr. F.- R. Scott's poems'in the magazines and anthologies of the past two decades have also looked forward to the year which would bring a collection of them. That it would be an impressive book no one could have ·doubted. 'It is more impressive than I had expected-it reveals that Mr. Scott is-among the · few modern poets who can be- read at length with unweaned technical pleasure, with intellectual satisfaction, and with unresting poetical excite- . ment. Ooertu~e is one of the best volumes of poetry this country has seeu, and what I have elsewhere described as the wall that Amer1cans have raised against Canadian poetry should not prove high enough ~·o keep out -Mr. Scott. His poetry is the expression of a man who is Jiving intensely and ~ sensitively on all levels, spi~itual; intellectual, poEtical and sensual. It is . the expression of a man who, very much a citizen of his own country, isalso a citizen of the world. I do not know of any book in prose or verse in 269 ...