Poetry

294 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY The most valuable book of the year is an anthology, Mrs Ethel Hume Bennett's New Harvesting: Contemporary Canadian Poetry, 1918-1938. The publisher and the compiler are to be congratulated on its comprehensiveness and on its very modest price. The compiler has, however, been too self-effacing: the brief biographical notes are useful, but they should have been supplemented by an introductory essay explaining how our poetry came to attempt new things and to achieve a new manner, and estimating, perhaps, how far the new things and the new manner have been successfully handled. This anthology is clearly destined to be reprinted; and it is not in the spirit of idle criticism, therefore, to say that with an introductory essay by Mr W. E. Collin or Mr A. J. M. Smith (if the compiler does not wish to write one) its usefulness would be hugely increased. A second edition should also be slightly more inclusive: the absence of Mr A. M. Klein is an intolerable blemish in so good a.book as this; and the representation of Mr A. J. M. Smith, Mr Watson Kirkconnell, and Mr Duncan Campbell Scott is seriously inadequate. But it is a more important test that what is included in an anthology should be good, than that no good things should have been omitted. This more important test Mrs Bennett does in the main pass triumphantly. From her collection one can see quite clearly the directions of Canadian poetry in the past twenty years : what has been of secondary importance in the period is secondary in her book. One aspect of our contemporary poetry requires, however, much more space than Mrs Bennett allows it: satire. Perhaps it is distaste for satiric poetry that explains the exclusion of Mr Klein; the poems of Mr F. R. Scott included in the anthology would never lead anyone to suspect his vigour in satire; and the overlooking of the claims of Mr L. A. MacKay confirms one in the hypothesis that Mrs Bennett does not care for satire in verse. If the hypothesis is right, it points to a great limitation in her power to do for our poetry all that at this moment an anthologist could and should do. It seems useful to point out the specific weaknesses of this work since, unlike most good books published in Canada, it will beyond question have a fair sale, a second edition, and a strong influence in the reshaping of our standards of excellence. Far less useful is A New Canadian Anthology, edited by the spirited Nova Scotia poet Mr Alan Creighton with the assistance of Miss Hilda M. Ridley. The editor has excluded, he tells us, LETTERS IN CANADA: 1938 295 all poems going beyond thirty-two lines; and although one is pleased that he has not applied the limitation with severe literalism (Mr Gordon LeClaire's " Initiate, 1918" extends to thirty-six), the principle is vicious. It is impossible to represent many of OUf best poets in lyrical snatches. A more serious limitation is hinted in the remark: "In making our selections .. . we were limited to the work submitted to ~s." It is not clear what this means: Did the editor not invite contributions from all the poets he esteemed worthy of inclusion? Did the poets invited send in mediocre or unrepresentative poems? Whatever the statement may mean) the anthology is not sufficiently representative of our best poetry; and its real usefulness lies in the introduction of notable writers who are either not known at all or are known only locally. The QUARTERLY has, from the initiation of the survey of Canadian literature, had a specially keen interest in talent which is either unsuspected or insufficiently appreciated. A number of the best poems in this collection are by poets who have not as yet published colleccions of their own; and it is to them that comment here will be confined. The poems I have in mind are Mrs Angus's "West Coast/' Miss Mookman's USea Burial," Mr Rowland's "Epitaph for Warriors," and Miss Smart's "Bourgeois Afternoon!' Space does not suffice for representing all four by quotation; let the...