The New Canon: An Anthology of Canadian Poets (review)

In a suspiciously worded Wikipedia stub (suspicious in that it appears to be self-authored), Montreal poet, critic, and anthologist Carmine Starnino is referred to as 'the attack dog of Canadian poetry.' His career is further summed up with the following, risible faint praise: he is 'considered by many University thinkers and students, alike, to be an evolving poet who has written important literary criticism.'

This 'attack dog' business, which is speckled throughout the trail Starnino has left on the Net, has to do with his 1994 collection of reviews and essays, A Lover's Quarrel, in which he vilifies virtually every revered poet in the country, in an attempt to rectify what he calls our 'chronic overestimation' of the Canadian canon.

The New Canon is a collection of poets chosen for their age (the fifty selected poets are born between 1955 and 1975) and because, editor Starnino writes, in his shockingly laboured introduction, they are 'the most impressive and potentially transformative group of poets' he can envision from his perch as, more accurately, the fractious attack budgie of Canadian poetry.

While The New Canon contains a number of excellent poets, including Gil Adamson, Ken Babstock, Walid Bitar, David McGimpsey, Karen Solie, and more, there are some dreadful inclusions too, whom I will not name, because I, unlike Starnino, do not wish to carve a tiny niche for myself by attacking other writers.

Let me just say that the Montreal Mafia is well represented here, a smug group of self-congratulatory, crafty hacks, and that Starnino's de facto bodyguard David Solway – best known for reviling Al Purdy's sainted memory on the first anniversary of his death – is not: perhaps Starnino is finally learning to cover some of his tiny bird tracks.

Yet the contributors to The New Canon feel irrelevant to the larger project that is the furthering of Starnino's auto-plot: to construct the world of Canadian poetry as a carnival he barks at; more direly, to make a living, like Mikey, the boy who hated everything but Life cereal, by sniping at everyone who does not meet his utterly obscure aesthetic requirements.

In the prolix introduction, Starnino extravagantly praises poet Bruce Taylor for his alliterative deployment of the words 'schmecks' and 'spavined.' 'Right off the bat,' the editor declares, 'you know that Taylor has a real ear, not simply a literary one.' Wondering, fitfully, what real and literary ears were, I looked to the poetry of Starnino himself, which, unsurprisingly fulfils his criteria for 'defeating the inexpressible.'

Ooohing over these floats – a ship, a hot-air balloon, a windmill – is silly. To think of them as poetry even sillier ...

So chirps Starnino in 'Credo,' in verse so weak and so gutless, one would burn it from a greeting card.

It feels counter-productive to express the obvious about Starnino and his 'important to University thinkers' oeuvre, as this is the sort of thing his equally-hobbled cronies flock to, like moiling pigeons.

'Anthologies have it hard,' Starnino writes in his introduction. I called Pages Bookstore in Toronto, who move a lot of cutting-edge critical product, and their manager informed me that they have sold nine copies of the book in the year since it has been published.

While vital anthologies of Canadian poetry are needed, if only to overthrow Gary Geddes' reign of terror, The New Canon is not that – or it might be, if one were inclined to sever its context and purpose, and simply enjoy the, largely, blameless poetry that can scarcely be heard above all the squawking, preening, and puke.