Poetry

LEITERS IN CANADA: 1967 EDITED BY DAVID M . HAYNE We welcome to this issue of "Letters in Canada" Professor Rejean Robidoux, who succeeds Professor Jean Ethier-Blais as reviewer in charge of publications in French in the double category "Roman et the~tre." As this section did not appear in the July 1967 issue, Professor Robidoux includes in this year's survey of French-Canadian novels Some of the more important titles of the previous year. We extend a grateful greeting also to Professor J. H. Dales who, in the absence on sabbatical leave of the regular reviewer, Professor R. M. Saunders, has consented to prOVide this year's "Nature" reviews. This issue of "Letters in Canada" includes an author-title index prepared in the Editorial Department of the University of Toronto Press. POETRY The year's poetry reveals the vigour of both the established writers and the new wave. A surprising number of well-known poets brought out publications in the course of the year. There were selections and collections by P. K. Page, A. J. M. Smith, and George Woodcock, and new works by Louis Dudek, D. G. Jones, Dorothy Livesay, Eli Mandel, Alden Nowlan, Alfred Purdy, Raymond Souster, and, inevitably, Irving Layton. It was also a year of experiment by poets new and old, featuring concrete poetry and "found" poetry, as well as the exploration of free form and syllabic verse. While tl,ere was much of interest in the year's work, however, there were few surprises: several promising writers published first collections, but nOne moved decisively from promise to realization. A fitting centennial party was provided by A. J. M. Smith, whose Modern Canadian Verse: In English and French (Oxford, xxvi, 426, $6.50) is a fine sequel to his edition of The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse (1960). In the preface to the new volume he remarks that it grew out of what was to have been a revision of the earlier anthology, but in 360 LETTERS IN CANADA the course of preparing the new version he SOOn realized that "the development of Canadian verse since the rise of modernism in the twenties could not be presented as an appendage to the poetry of the nineteenth century." The anthology amply justiIies this judgment. Modern Canadian Verse contains 377 poems by 82 poets, and almost one-third of the poets represented write in French. It opens with selections from the work of E. J.Pratt, Paul Morin, and W . W. E. Ross, and closes with a large body of poetry from the last decade. Wherever possible the poems have been chosen from the most recent collections available, and looking through the acknowledgments one finds few dates before 1950 and a surprising number in the period from 1960 to 1967. The anthology thus provides both a review of poetry in this century and a spectrum of the work being written at present. There are a few writers who I hope will find a place in future editions ( ruchard Outram, for example), but on the whole it is difficult to quarrel with the editor's choice. In one area only does the anthology seem lacking, and that is in the kind of experimental poetry which is associated with the west coast and writers such as Frank Davey. No editor can hope to please everyone in his selection of representative poems, but in this, too, A. J. M. Smith shows remarkable powers of discrimination. A word of warning, however, is necessary: in many cases the selections complement those of the earlier anthology. Most of the pieces by Margaret Avison, for example, are from T he Dumbfounding, and the reader who wishes more examples of her earlier poetry must turn to the Oxford Book of Canadian Verse. So must the reader who is interested in, for example, the marvellous snow poems of P. K. Page. The advantage of such variety is obvious: it ensures that the reader who possesses both anthologies has available a substantial amount of poetry by the more important Canadian poets of our time. Leafing through the anthology, refreshing memories of well-known poems, and making the acquaintance of new authors, one finds that the richness...