P.K. Page: Essays on Her Works ed. by Linda Rogers, Barbara Colebrook Peace (review)

530 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 writing. Perhaps in the end, it is the unevenness itself that provides the most fitting testament to a writer who was, as the title suggests, a complex mingling of >misunderstood Funny Man,= self-important curmudgeon, and sturdy social satirist. (KLAY DYER) Linda Rogers and Barbara Colebrook Peace, editors. P.K. Page: Essays on Her Works Guernica. 174. $10.00 In her introduction to what Linda Rogers calls a >collection of Afabules@= (though it is not clear why), P.K. Page is referred to as a >cosmic= storyteller, an >impressionist,= a >fabulist,= a >confabulist,= a >magician,= an >alchemist,= an >exquisitely sensible medium,= and a >poet uncomfortable with stasis.= The reverential tone of these labels is typical of the rest of the book. It is subtitled >Essays on [Page=s] Works= but it contains two poems, by Margaret Atwood and Rogers respectively, a few reminiscences, an interview, and some articles that seem to be short reviews. There are only three articles that can be called proper essays. One is an analysis of >Arras,= another is a reflection on the issue of naming, and the third, by Travis Lane, is about Page=s imagery of circumscription and motion in Page=s poetry. The last essay of the three is the only one that offers anything new to the critical analysis of Page=s work so far. The collection clearly sets out to be a tribute to Page and her poetry. It ignores the usual academic paraphernalia of citations of poems, footnotes, endnotes, and the like, although there is a selective bibliography at the back. Included in it are lists of readings that Page has done, of magazines and of anthologies, but none of these indicates titles of works, dates, or page references, so they are of little or no help to scholars. There are only two references in the essays to any of the previous scholarship on Page=s work and one of those does not specify who the earlier critic is or where to find the reference. Instead, the editors have chosen to solicit rather short, glowing, fairly general treatments of Page=s poetry (there is virtually nothing on the stories and novella) that outline an approach to her spirituality, or mysticism, or transcendence, or longing for release to a higher plane, depending on who is reading the texts. Along the way, most of the writers are mesmerized by Page=s style. They cannot praise it enough. Many of them get poetic themselves. The main weakness of the collection, in fact, is that the writers are content to be impressionistic and to leave open (read unanswered) many of the questions they raise. The most interesting essay, by Travis Lane, tackles the complex attitude towards language that one finds in the poems. Page seems to think of language as >somehow at once circumscribing and insubstantial= so that the poem for Page >becomes a sort of hologram, translucent but sourced from beyond.= Lane=s description of the motions and energy in Page=s poems as humanities 531 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 >non-progressive: tremblings in place= is an insight that encourages readers to go back and study the poems again B just what a good essay ought to do. What is missing from the essays is any study of Page=s use of irony, ambiguity, paradox, and the like. What often adds dimension and depth to the poems is Page=s way of seeing in opposing directions at once so that she does pretend to mystical fervour. She remains very grounded for all that. This collection might have emphasized this aspect of her work a little more. For all the limitations of the collection, it is useful as an introductory study for readers who are just beginning to read Page=s poems. They will pick up an approach to understanding the themes, and to some extent the styles, in her work. Biographical essays are included, although they are curiously placed towards the end of the collection rather than at the beginning. The tone of the essays is relaxed and conversational. The...