Poetry

LETTERS IN CANADA: 1944 Edited by A. S. P. WOODHOUSE THE survey this year is presented exactly as it was last year, except, that it has been found possible to include the whole of it in the April issue. The falling off in the amount published in the English-Canadian and New-Canadian fields, as a result of the war-,time activity of our wr(ters, the paper shortage, and other difficulties in publishing, is self-evident. Accordingly, no 'introduction is necessary, but merely the usual acknowledgments . We are indebted, ~s always, to the Editorial Office of the University Press and to the Universlty LIbrary, to the contrihlltors not on the editorial board, and this year to the zealous wo~k of Madame Krystyna Zbieranski in assembling the books produced in French Canada. 1. POETRY E. K. BROWN After the Collected Poems of E. J. Pratt, reviewed at length in the January number of the QUARTERLY, the most important contribution to the corpus of our poetry in 1944 came from Mr. Abraham M. Klein. Mr. Klein, was one' of the six represented in the anthology Poems by Several ,Authors (1936); and four years later a collection of his verse Hath Not a Jew . .. came out in New York. Perhaps because the anthology did not circulate very widely, and the collection was published by an American house, Mr. Klein has not been as well known in Canada as the merits of his poetry require. It is perhaps unfortunate for the growth of his reputation at home that the two -volumes he has given us in 1944 were brought out in the United States. The Hitleriad seems to me the less valuable of the two. It is a Byronic poem, a rich mixture of satire and burIes-que, in which Hitler and his associates· are impaled on the twin spears of laughter and derision. The double effect is not 'as strong as the poet hoped; the satire does not reinforce the burlesque, nor the burlesque the satire; rather the lines are clouded by the varying intent. Almost all Mr. Klein's verse leaves an impression of haste. It is not a wholly unfortunate impression: "it suggests spontaneity, intensity, conviction; but the advantages are bought at the high price of more than, occasional carelessness, and the car~­ less'details are not always succes~fully carried by the vigour and colour of the general effect. In his Poems, especially in the first section, his Psalms, h~s work is more careful than it has ever been. In "Psalm IV", subtitied "A psalm of Abraham, touching his green pastures/' he has attained an exquisite purity of note: From pastures green, whereon I lie, Beside still waters, far from crowds, I lift hosannahs to the sky And halleluj ahs to the clouds, 261 262 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY Only to see where clouds should sit, And in that space the sky should fill, The fierce carnivorous Messerschmidt, The Heinkel on the kill. They'll not be green for very long, Those pastures of my peace, nor will , The heavens be a place for song, Nor the still waters still. In his Psalms-there are thirty-six-he is remarkably varied both in topic and feeling, and he has usually found appropriate f01"ms. The forms I should question are, for instance, in Psalm VI (where the rhythm fails to rise to the height of the feeling) and Psalm X (in which the idea is not adequately embodied). Compared with the characteristic poems in Hath Not a Jew . .. , most 0[- the Psalms have a sobriety and tranquillity of , expression which comes as a surprise in Mr. Klein's verse. The second group in the collection, "A Voice \Vas Heard in Ramah," resembles more closely what Mr. KJein has given us before. The choruses in "Ballad of the Thwarted Axe" are marked by those brilliant unexpected. but wonderfully suitable images which abound in Mr. Klein's treasury, for instance: or ' The blade that's eaten by the flint The better eats the bone 1 Headsman, hendsman, catch that breath, That is as sharp as lime! 0, it will eat away the limbs Of any judge's crime...