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POETRY 323 vent de W.O. Mitchell, traduit par Arlette Franciere (294, $5.95); Le Reve impossible de Wilfrid Pocock, traduit par Michelle Robinson (352, $6.95). (GABRIELLE POULIN et RENE DIONNE) POETRY To prevent false expectations, here is a summary of my ground rules. This review is a round-up of 'poetry in Canada' during one year - or rather, of the works that have actually reached me, somewhat less than the national product but still amounting to seventy-four books. My aims are necessarily limited. I do not aim at total coverage, retrospective scholarly comparison, or measured judgment. I do have some hope that as I flail away at this crop, quality will shine forth golden and substantial against all the chaff. But if it happens that I miss the essence of a particular work, or even its existence, that is a risk I don't see how to avoid. Readers who seek a detailed and thoughtful analysis of individual authors should resort to the weekend Globe and other periodical reviews. The only risk there is that a solo frog may loom a bit larger than life. By quality, I mean a combination of skills, craftsmanship. Your dungaree Muse, artless and unpremeditated at every street corner, is not a girl to trust - or to hold you for long. Parnassus ago-go is soon gone. The skills I look for are these: an eye that sees familiar things fresh and new (or brings unfamiliar things into focus, a rnuch rarer gift); a voice with distinctive intonation, and if not a wealth of words at least a competence; an ear alert to the rhythms of speech and of song; and a vision that rhymes all these into a whole, a country, a world recreated. It's a lot to ask, but why should we settle for less? Verse is like the violin: if it is not handled superbly, it should be done in private. Why submit ourselves to the insistent bleating of an ego, to the illiterate shouter from the barnyard, to the frail charlatan who believes that his precious droppings scattered on a blank page are enough to command our attention? There are classes of work that I exclude from even a hasty survey, on various principles. Some are simply not my concern, though they have turned up on my desk. For example A.P. Campbell's Albert the Talking Rooster is for children; splendid, but not now. The publication of Duncan Campbell Scott's Selected Poetry, edited by Glenn Clever, is a poetic event but does not belong in a round-up of 1974 dogies - though a leisurely comparison of Scott with present-day poets should go on someday's agenda. I also exclude translations, because unless I grasp the originals in full I cannot know whether I'm assessing the composer or his Anglophone agent. This year I resign The Poems of Rufinos, rendered from the Latin by Ian Michael Dyroff; Ierzy Harasymowicz's early scherzo Genealogy 324 LETTERS IN CANADA of Instruments, translated from Polish by Catherine Leach and Seymour Mayne; and The Alchemy of the Body by Juan Garcia, translated by Marc Plourde - who supplies the French originals: being in this case not wholly at sea, I venture the impression that the English version is an improvement. I also exclude anthologies, on the ground that my survey itself comprises a giant anthology, each volume a single flower. If one of those volumes were in turn an anthology, each author in it would shrink to a mere petal. I do list them, for readers who prefer to curl up with a good spectrum. Robert Cockburn and Robert Gibbs have edited Ninety Seasons, subtitled Modern Poems from the Maritimes. Douglas Lochhead and Raymond souster have chosen IOO Poems of Nineteenth Century Canada. I have two copies of Poets of the Capital, edited by Frank Tierney and Stephen Gill. And the writing workshop of the University of Ottawa sends me an anthology of student writing; I hope this will not set a precedent. The most surprising collection of the year is published in Athens, by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sciences, impeccably printed and styled: Five Canadian Poets...

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