Poetry

66 LEITERS IN CANADA 1993 rappelle la litterature sud-americaine. Jusqu'au milieu du recueil ou un peu plus, all est sous Ie coup d'un enchantement absolu. Puis, peu apeu, s'installe une certaine lassitude, que cause la reprise constante des memes procedes stylistiques. Les effets qu'obtient l'auteure sont efficaces, mais ce sont toujours les memes, comme 5i, au piano, on plaquait toujours les trois Oll quatre memes accords. Reviennent du debut a la fin les memes rythmes un den langui5sants, Ie meme recours aux cliches remodeles (( lui chanter la pomme parce que son temps des cerises avait ete beaucoup trop court »), les memes series d'enumerations, assez imaginatives, mais un peu machinales a la longue. Le recueil n'en demeure pas moins un texte important, re£lechi, porte par un projet fort et par une esthetique personnelle. Le roman et les romanciers, cette annee comme toujours, retiennent presque seuls l'interet des medias et des amateurs de fiction; mais la nouvelle gagne du terrain, au du mains merite d'en gagner. Ase detourner des formes breves, comrne Ie font encore trop de lecteurs, on s'expose a ignorer l'un des greffons les plus vivaces de la litterature quebecoise contemporaine. Poetry RHEA TREGEBOV It is easy for the reviewer to be stunned, if not overwhelmed, by the sheer volume of poetic production in Canada, an output that this lengthy article barely touches upon. Given the plethora of titles that came in for review in 1993, how does one distinguish and categorize this varied output? Perhaps a useful way to begin is to query the motivation behind the work. What is the poet's intent? And to what degree is that intent accomplished? Those who self-define within narrow constraints, whether they be of form or content, prescribe for themselves a small range of potential accomplishment. Their writing can only do so much. While false dichotomies abound - 'avant-garde' poetry versus 'conventional ' poetry; 'language' versus 'mainstream' poetry - Canadian poetry today is neither dual nor monolithic; it offers a variety of strategies, options, and resources to the poet. Which of these options most appeals to an individual writer is probably more dependent on the make-up of the writer's psyche than it is on allegiance to critical theory. Some succumb to the lyric impulse; others to the narrative; still others to the lure of musicality. But perhaps the best poetry being written today is that which, whatever the direction towards which it is inclined, fully relinquishes none of its poetic resources. Looking at the books that came in, it seems that it is those poets who are most explicitly conscious of the POETRY 67 range and breadth of poetic possibilities at their disposat without being .explicitly or narrowly affiliated by theory or manifesto to any single aspect, who are most capable of a broad and deep poetic achievement. Good evidence of this is Don Coles, a poet whose quietly intense writing intends and achieves much. Right on the heels of his stunning Little Bird (1992), Coles has produced a new collection of poetry, Forests of the Medieval World (Porcupine's Quill, 64, $9.95 paper), which, happily, won the Governor-General's Award for Poetry in 1993. In the title poem, and in much of the new book, Coles continues to flex the perfectly modulated, passionate yet disinterested voice which flowed through Little Bird and made it such a masterpiece. 'The Forests of the Medieval World' contains two parallel currents: the story of the lost, razed forests of Europe and the story of the narrator's lost love. While the love story is sketched in with quick, telling strokes, the story of the forests is etched in loving, and fascinating, detail. The interweaving of these two tales, and their implied emotional consonance, is another extraordinary tour de force for Coles, whose depth and breadth continue to astonish: The Oberforst171eister of Kurland promised the King 'at least half-fabulous' beasts for the hunt, his forest measured 140,000 nrpents and even on the swiftest mounts horsemen could not traverse it in a month. My mind runs fast down its nrpents and leafy corridors, seeing no one, I should...