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THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY I. POETRY E. K. BROWN There is no difficillty in singling out the most important book of poetry published by a Canadian in 1937: it is Mr. E. J. Pratt's The Fable of the,Goats. This collection consists of a long allegorical narrative which furnishes the title, and nineteen other poems of varied lengths and moods. It is markedly different work from Mr. Pratt's earlier volumes, although in The Titanic (1935) some of its aspects are present in a less emphatic form. What distinguishes it from the body of its author's work is a daring experi mentation in techniques and a keen awareness of the structure and disease~ or contemporary society. That a poet who has already explored the possibilities of two or three profound moods and 'original themes should renew himself so fully is a heartening sign; most Canadian poets take a mould when they are young 'and never display any evidence of dissatisfaction with it. The monotony and the narrowness of our poetry are in no small measure owing to such an unwillingness to.adventure and develop. The past five or six years of social experience have left a deeper mark on Mr. Pratt than on any other of our major poets. He is writing contemporary poetry as the best of the American poets do. Most of his best work in the past has been in a slngle metrical form-the' rhyming tetrameter, a measure which suits his delight in resounding rhythms, clear tonality, rapid development, and emphatic statement. The specific danger of that measure he has avoided by breaking away from a strict succession of couplets and by introducing variety'of accent within the line. In "The Fable of the Goats" the rhyming tetrameter is retained. Retained too is the rush of polysyllabic music which has been one of the distinguishing marks of his poetry and which other Canadian poets are now seeking to imitate-with slight success. The first four lines of the titular poem would make one say ' "This is Prattl" even if ~:)fle came upon them in the dark deserts of the WasteLand. No one but he, inside Canada or outside, has quite the accent of: One half a continental span, The Aralasian.mountains lay Like a Valkyrian caravan At rest along the Aryan way. But in the shorter poems which follow "The Fable of the Goats,'1 other and often quite novel forms occur. 340 LETTERS IN CANADA: 1937 The substance of his earlier poetry s'uggested unmistakably that Mr. :pratt was ill at ease under the cramping pressures of contemporary life, and' seeking to liberate himself by making a dean break for a more spacious world, either the world of primitive mastodons or the world ofthe sea with'its heroes and its monstrous denizens. He drew his figures and their setting on a scale so grand that it was difficult to focus them clearly; he has been dominated, as Mr. W. E. Collin has said, by the "heroic imagination." Now he is pursued into his primitive 'world by the very pressures he formerly broke away from so sharply. He writes an allegory: wild creatures exemplify human traits, first greed, ambition, pugmlcity , then peace and conciliation. ,Mr. Pratt has no Clue to disguise his allegory or even to leave it~ in the manner of most allegorists, ambiguous. The fierce, bounding, heroic temperament which formerly captivated his imagination is subdued to the purest form of Christian temper; it has remained heroic forclearly it has subdued itself. "The Fable of the Goats" is an achievement; it does' not take away from its high value to say that it will probably be spoken of in the future as the first of a series of poems in which a new aspect of Mr. Prates power will appear. It convinces one that superior things are possible in the same kind. Among the other poems.in the collection the one which lS most striking and moving is ,"Silences." It is in a metre and mood new in Mr. Pratt's work, a mood comparable with the terror which is the distinguishing characteristic of l\1;r.Robinson Jeffers. There is a...

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