Poetry

LETTERS IN CANADA: 1942 Edited by PHILIP CHILD LAST year we intimated that the scope of "Letters in Canada: 1942" might have to be limited in certain respects in order to diminish the expense of its production. This curtailment has, in fact, been found advisable. This year articles in periodicals are not listed nor are theY-dealt with .in the essays. Important books, however, and a few selected pamphlets are accounted for in the usual way. It is particularly to be regretted that this revised plan leaves no place for Professor Norwood',s annual note on classical scholarship, 'since it was largely based on articles in periodicals. devoted to the classics; when the times permit a return to our origina( plan, no part of it will be more eagerly resumed than Professor Norwood's. One further alteration ill the Bibliography should be noted: last year the Lists appeared ina block at the end of "Letters in Canada"; this ye~r they are divided so that each List {onows the essay to which it is related. This year French-Canadian and New-Canadian .Letters appear in this issue rather than in the July QU:ARTERLY. There remains the pleasant duty of thanking those who have in various ways assisted in the preparation of this survey. They include the authors ofthe essays and the contributors of individual reviews, Mrs Hewitt and her staffin the General Editorial Office of the University Press, the officials of the University.·Library and of the Reference Depar.tment of the Toronto Public Libraries, and the 'officials of the Canadian Broadcas~ing Corporation who have given Mr Milne access t~ Canadian radio scripts. 1. POETRY E. K. BROWN In 1942 the most notable book was a first .collection, Mr Earle Birney's David and Other Poems. The title piece alone would have sufficed to make it so. David is a narrative of a kind new to our poetry, matter-of-fact in manner and, until the crisis is reached, matter-of-fact ih substance also. It is 'a tale of two young men climbing mountains along the British Columbian ~oast, David an experienced mountaineer, Bobbie a novice. The early 305 306 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY sections of the poem-it comes just short of two hundred linesare rich in pictures and impressions, in passages such as " and Then the darke.ning firs And the sudden whirring of water that knifed down a fern-hidden Cliff and splashed unseen into mist in the shadows Coming down we picked in our hats the bright And sunhot raspberries, eating them under a mighty Spruce, whil,e a marten moving like quicksilver scouted us passages which for all their detail are full of vitality and suggestion, urging the reader to participate fully in the experience of the characters. These early sections carry also a load of learning) the mountaineer's learning of rocks and fossils, a load perhaps heavier than the prevailing note of simplicity requires. The two characters are securely realized, the relation between them is warm without I ceasing to be simple and clear. The tragedy comes quietly; Bobbie's foothold gives way and David instinctively turns in a trice to steady him; the added strain is enough to make David slide, and at once he is gone. It is all over in an instant, and the quickness is an essential part of the effect Mr Birney is trying'to produce. The central scene is yet to come: it is the dialogue between the two when Bobbie has made-his way to where David lies partly , paralysed. ,Mr Birney,has found simple words, brief phrases, which bear the weight of David's plea to be pushed from the ledge on ~hich he is caught and die in a six hundred foot drop, and of Bobbie's plea that he wait till help can be brought. Bobbie yields, staggers back to camp, _ and I said that he fell straight to the ice where they found him, And none but the sun and the incurious clouds have lingered Around the marks of that-day on the ledge of the Finger, That day, the last of my youth, on the last...