Criticism in PracticeRobert Lecker, Jack David, Ellen Quigley, eds. Canadian Writers and Their Works. Poetry Series. Volume Four. [Finch, Kennedy, Klein, Scott, Smith] Toronto: ECW Press, 1990. 299 pp. Robert Lecker, Jack David, Ellen Quigley, eds. Canadian Writers and Their Works. Poetry Series. Volume Seven. [Acorn, Nowlan, Purdy, Reaney, Webb] Toronto: ECW Press, 1990. 331 pp. Just about the time these books came for review, I also received through the mail a cache of the latest ECW Press publicity material. A sheet devoted to the Canadian Writers and Their Works series, after quoting a laudatory notice, proudly announced: "In fact, every review CWTW has received has been extremely positive." I wondered about that. A touch of hubris, perhaps? Certainly, a strong temptation for any irresponsible critic with a weakness for upsetting apple-carts. Well, whatever my own literary-critical faults may be, that isn't one of them. This has always seemed to me an admirable series, even if some individual contributions have, inevitably, proved disappointing. Now that it is close to completion (and probably will be complete when this review appears in print), the time seems ripe for a general assessment in Canadian Poetry not only of the contents of the most recent volumes devoted to poets but also of the qualities, influence, and even the pros and cons of the whole enterprise. The consistent format of the series is now well-known. Each volume contains an introductory essay by George Woodcock, and either four or five substantial essays so designed that they can also be published separately in pamphlet form. Each of the individual studies is generally divided into separate sections: Biography, Tradition and Milieu, Critical Overview and Context, then (invariably the longest section) an interpetative reading of the author's main work followed by a select but relatively extensive bibliography. At first sight, this may sound at least as rigid as the notorious Twayne series — especially if one happens to know that specific recommendations concerning word-lengths for each section were sent to potential contributors by the editors. In practice, however, the system has worked well. Lecker, David and Quigley have permitted variations to fit the unique needs of the individual study, and there has been little reason for critics to feel inhibited by an inflexible and imposed method. Nonetheless, these relatively innocent requirements have resulted in a number of rather curious anomalies. Two I shall sidestep here: the by no means clear relation to the concurrent Annotated Bibliography of Canada's Major Authors series (the CWTW authors not included in ABCMA often seem fully qualified for "major" status); the curious genre-division that allows certain authors — Atwood, Kroetsch, Knister (Knister?!) — to appear twice. But one issue demands to be confronted: the effect of the series on the now decidedly controversial question of "canon." When complete, CWTW will contain studies of 48 poets and 49 fiction-writers. The coverage is reasonably full, but arguments concerning exclusions and inclusions can nonetheless arise. Take, for example, the following two lists: (a) bill bissett, Robert Finch, Leo Kennedy, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Eli Mandel, Joe Rosenblatt, Anne Wilkinson; (b) Elizabeth Brewster, Don Coles, John Glassco, George Johnston, Douglas LePan, Douglas Lochhead, David Soiway. I am frankly at a loss to understand why the former team should be represented in CWTW and the latter should not. (Similar lists, I might add, could be compiled for writers of fiction.) In an age when "evaluation" is looked upon, albeit naïvely, with some suspicion, it is important to note that editors like Lecker, David, and Quigley are not only being blatantly evaluative in making their selections but (unlike their counterparts, the evaluative critics) are under no obligation to explain and justify their judgments — judgments which, especially for the writers omitted, can have considerable consequences. One clue to the process of selection is offered by Volume Four, covering Robert Finch, Leo Kennedy, A. M. Klein, F. R. Scott, and A. J. M. Smith. Woodcock begins his introduction by likening the book to "a literary class reunion" (5), since, with the exception of the decidedly older E. J. Pratt, who is discussed in an earlier volume, they represent all the contributors to the famous New Provinces anthology of 1936. That explains, presumably, the otherwise challengeable inclusion of Kennedy — and even, perhaps, of Finch. Kennedy gains admission to the series not, surely, for the quality and lasting importance of his verse (which, as Francis Zichy expertly demonstrates here, is modest in quantity and has not aged well) but because he conveniently rounds out a pattern. The same might be said of Wilfred Campbell in the obviously well-rounded "Poets of Confederation" volume, and perhaps for Anne Wilkinson in the company of Margaret Avison, Ralph Gustafson, Jay Macpherson, and P. K. Page in Volume Six. Clearly, one is more likely to qualify for inclusion if one fits neatly into some sort of slot; as Woodcock notes, both critics and literary historians "find it convenient to arrange poets into movements, groups, and groupuscules" (5). Yet, ultimately, are not the more interesting writers likely to be those who invite the phrase "sui generis"? Other editorial matters can be dealt with more briefly. The decision to invite Woodcook to act as a sort of literary-critical master of ceremonies by writing an introduction to each volume was a brilliant stroke. As I have remarked in the course of reviewing earlier volumes, he can on occasion say more in a brief couple of prefatory pages than some of the less experienced commentators convey in their main essays. Above all, he offers an all-important balance, since he does not hesitate to disagree with contributors over details and interpretations. There is, however, an unfortunate aspect of this arrangement: students consulting the separately-published essays miss the advantage of Woodcock's corrective remarks. Moreover, one wonders how many of those who consult the complete volumes regularly check the introduction against the findings of the essays. Still, the concept is admirable. A possibly unanticipated problem — the obverse of the advantage gained in classifying the poets in groups — is especially noticeable in Volume Four. Each contributor feels bound to offer an account of the New Provinces publication, and most writers provide details of the so-called "McGill Movement" and the various magazines connected with it. If one reads through the whole book, this becomes repetitious. Finally, a more controversial issue. I wish the editors had not, in a number of instances, invited already established experts to discuss writers about whom they have already published at length. For example, Sandra Djwa writes the section in Volume Four devoted to F. R. Scott, having already published the standard biography, the briefer Dundurn Press Profiles introduction, several articles, and co-edited a book of essays about him. Her credentials are, of course, impeccable, and the article as solid as we would expect, but inevitably there is little new or startling. A more imaginative choice was that of Noreen Golfman to write on A. M. Klein; a young scholar with just one excellent article on Klein's early work to her credit, she brought a welcome freshness to the enterprise. (Needless to say, I hope, no invidious comparisons are intended here. I am merely commenting on a general principle.) This last point raises, of course, a decidedly basic question: who reads the CWTW volumes? Obviously (the relatively cheap pamphlet-style publication of individual essays attests to this) they are intended for beginning students. At the same time, these are presumably studies to which university teachers turn when they need to reacquaint themselves with a writer's range. Speaking for myself, I am about to teach a course in modern Canadian poetry for the first time in several years and have happily seized the opportunity occasioned by this review to reread the earlier volumes of the series. The argument I developed in the previous paragraph obviously relates only to more experienced readers and critics, but, as we turn from general editorial considerations to the individual treatments of specific poets, we shall do well to acknowledge that each contributor is faced with a unique problem: how to adapt the consistent format so that the appropriate issues essential to a proper discussion of the poet in question can be raised and debated; and, by extension, how to achieve this while catering to both beginning and advanced readers. A straight survey, while obligatory in some form or another, is not in itself sufficient. The critic must not only impart information but must present a demonstration of how an informed and sensitive reader can approach and interpret a coherent oeuvre. It is with this double responsibility in mind that I intend to scrutinize the individual essays in these volumes. * * * Noreen Golfman was faced with perhaps the greatest challenge of all the contributors to Volume Four. There is, first, the sheer magnitude of Klein's writings: the recently published — and most welcome — two-volume Complete Poems contains over seven hundred pages of poetry, exclusive of notes. Added to this is the problem of his erudite Jewish references and allusions, which are often unsettling to gentiles and can even tax the intellectual resources of well read Jews. In providing an introduction, Golfman has many hurdles to overcome and, as I have already indicated, she succeeds brilliantly. She assumes a basic awareness of the course of twentieth-century poetry on the part of her readers, and carefully places Klein in relation to the modernist movement in general and the work of T. S. Eliot in particular. She works on the wise principle that beginning students should be exposed to intelligent commentary even if the details may sometimes be beyond their level so far as complete comprehension is concerned. Her ideas are often quite complex, but she possesses a lucid, precise, and economic prose-style that enables her to convey her meaning cleanly, attractively, and freshly. Her casual description of Klein as "a cautious modernist" (128) is a convenient instance of her concise sharpness. Above all, she finds an ideal solution to the problem of introducing Klein's multi-faceted work: she chooses a small number of representative poems illustrating all the main aspects of his verse and submits them to a detailed and sensitive exegesis and commentary. No highfalutin theory, no obscurantist jargon. Expertly and unostentatiously she provides examples of how to read Klein and leaves her readers to apply similar methods to the rest of the corpus. Readers are offered, then, not just a whistle-stop survey but a genuinely helpful entrée into Klein's poetic universe. They may well come to the end of her discussion and regret that she did not give them more, but will recognize her limitations of space and realize that she has fulfilled her obligations by laying solid foundations for rewarding independent study. There is relatively little that needs to be said about Sandra Djwa's treatment of Scott. She chooses to take a resolutely historical approach, surveying his verse in chronological order of writing and attempting to relate it to the manifold events in Scott's remarkably varied life. But, with the exception of a detailed and decidedly useful analysis of "Laurentian Shield" (203-06), there is little attention paid to the verse as verse. It is slotted into its appropriate place rather than lingered over for its own sake. This is a thoroughly adequate, decade-by-decade survey, and perhaps it is unfair to ask for more — yet Golfman gives us more so far as Klein is concerned. As a reader reasonably familiar with Scott's work, I came away from this section reminded of some details I had forgotten but with no sense that my awareness of Scott as a poet had been heightened in any way. This, then, is an introductory account that can be confidently recommended to beginning students, but that is all. To be fair, however, I must acknowledge that it makes no claims to offer more than it delivers. Michael Darling had a somewhat easier task in discussing A.J.M. Smith, since no one in his (or her) senses would attempt a primarily developmental survey of Smith's work. These poems were constantly revised, tinkered with, reworked; they were frequently banished from the poet's authorized canon or, more rarely, restored. To approach his verse as if it constituted some kind of developing verse-diary would be ludicrous in Smith's case; emphasis must fall on the successfully realized quality of particular poems. As Darling remarks, "each poem by Smith should be treated as an independent work of art, and not forced into supporting a specific thesis about his entire canon" (240). After a necessary reference to Smith's juvenilia (discussed in more detail by Brian Trehearne in Aestheticism and the Canadian Modernists, a book that appeared too late for Darling to consider here), Darling devotes most of his space to rescuing Smith's work from the deadly generalized shroud in which it was encased in the Twayne series volume of over a decade ago. Darling's procedure is closer to Golfman's. He divides Smith's poems into various types — religious, metaphysical, descriptive, mythic, social, celebratory and parodic, etc. — and then offers a careful analysis of a poem that seems representative of each type and successful in itself. Darling writes intelligently and persuasively, providing demonstrations of practical criticism at its finest. I don't always agree with him completely in his interpretation and evaluation of individual texts, but that is not the point. What is important is that he provides an example of the approach that needs to be taken, and confronts questions that need to be considered. Darling is not only informative; he is both provocative and stimulating. Robert Finch offers a very different challenge. While most would agree that Smith, Scott, and Klein were influential writers of lasting importance within the area of Canadian poetry, Finch remains a controversial figure. Here is a poet who has twice won the Governor General's award, yet one who is not uncommonly dismissed as totally derivative and unimportant. This means, I fancy, that the main readership for a study of his work will be different. Undergraduates are unlikely to encounter his verse. Any introductory survey will more probably be sought out by the graduate student or by someone like myself who, though periodically attempting to "make my peace with Finch, finds difficulty in comprehending his claims to serious attention. The controversy over Finch's work is not merely a matter of taking the side of the traditionalists or the experimentalists, of adjudicating the claims of the chastely decorous or the unabashedly colloquial. Characteristically, Woodcock isolates the problem succinctly. Referring to his own tendency to regard Finch as a decidedly minor poet, he remarks: "It was, I think, the question of how far Finch was more than a craftsman, a kind of fine eighteenth-century cabinet-maker in words, a verbal Chippendale or Hepplewhite, that troubled me, as it still does" (16). My own doubts are similar. My personal tastes can readily encompass his traditional attitudes and critical values; what I find uncongenial is the deadening monotony of his technical competence, the way his verse exists in a timeless vacuum that has never been timely. I do not ask for romantic passion, but I do require crispness and tension in the verse, and I cannot find them. Does Susan Gingell help? Not, alas, very much. She begins with the argument that Finch is a "neoclassical" poet too often judged by neoRomantic standards. I would be happy to receive such an argument but, to put the matter bluntly, I am unimpressed by her qualifications for the task. A tell tale admission is buried in a note: "The discussion in this essay of the characteristics of neoclassical literature is largely based on that of [M. H.] Abrams, C. Hugh Holman, "Neoclassicism," A Handbook to Literature, . . . and Alan D. McKillop, Introduction, Eighteenth-Century Poetry and Prose . . ." [60-61]). This is surely insufficient, especially for the advanced students and teachers who are the most likely readership. In this area, Gingell sounds like a (not-very-advanced) student herself. And this explains certain troubling statements in the main body of the essay. Finch's didactic aim in some trivial-sounding poems (she has just quoted the line, "Live and learn. One must live, and live of course we do") is said to have "affinities with that of Alexander Pope in his 'Essay on Man' " (45). This is rather like comparing an opinionated one-act play to Back to Methuselah. And later: ". . . as for Pope, so for French: man's primary sin is pride" (47). Perhaps, but this recognition is no guarantee of poetic quality. Or, even more damaging: '[Finch's] distrust of emotion and passion are [sic] even more pronounced than Pope's" (51). Can Gingell have read "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" or "Eloisa to Abelard" or even "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot"? The inadequacy of such comments will hardly win over any skeptics. In addition, Gingell displays the unfortunate tendency of sidestepping difficulties that cry out for discussion. Thus she quotes "The Foreman," and observes: "Though not ponderously moralistic, the poem is, nonetheless, paternalistic" (48). She then passes on to now-to-be-expected feminist commentary. This is not irrelevant, but seems to me much too easy. The fact is, I do find the poem "ponderously moralistic." It seems patterned on those short poems of moral and religious allegory that George Herbert handled so delicately. The foreman surely stands for God and the female worker for the individual soul — an interpretation Gingell fails to consider. This doesn't, of course, answer the feminist argument, but it does raise it to a much more complex level. And the main question (for me) — why does Finch's poem seem so thin and weak compared with earlier examples within the tradition he is apparently following? — is never addressed. A little later, Gingell alludes to "The Voyage Begins" and argues as follows:
I can find no meaning in the last clause. The lines quoted are certainly vigorous, but such verse quickly becomes forecastable, even boring. "Marvellously adept" is, I would argue, way off-base; "technique" means more than just fitting words into anapestic patterns. All in all, there is some useful information offered in the early part of Gingell's essay, but I find very little satisfying criticism. In one respect, Francis Zichy is faced with a similar situation when discussing Leo Kennedy in that readership of an essay on Kennedy will probably be confined to advanced students and specialists. Even among subscribers to Canadian Poetry, I suspect, the mention of his name is likely to produce vague references to The Shrouding, "This Man of April," and (perhaps) "Epithalamium," but nothing more. The main difference from Finch, of course, is one of quantity. While Finch has published a dozen volumes of verse over a period of more than forty years, Kennedy's poetic output is, to all intents and purposes, confined to a single book. Zichy, then, was in a position to offer far more detailed analysis and more extensive coverage. In addition, he is well aware that Kennedy does not belong in the same poetic league as Smith, Scott, and Klein. Not afraid to be evaluative, he sensibly sets Kennedy's "Epithalamium" side by side with Smith's earlier "Prothalamium," and is able to demonstrate, convincingly and specifically, the difference between a distinctive and a clearly derivative poet. He provides a kind of criticism too rare in Canadian academic commentary: an insistence that a writer like Kennedy, however worthy in many respects, is ultimately just not good enough. We find him referring to "poetic fustian" (89), "the declamatory insistence of the diction, coupled with a paucity of meaning" (90), "trite language and metronomic rhythms" (91), "crude pastiche and bathos" (96). In each case, however, Zichy justifies his objections. The irony of the situation is that he provides an excellent dissection of Kennedy's work which at one and the same time justifies the editors in their choice of critic but casts grave doubt on the wisdom of their admitting Kennedy into the volume in the first place. As a consequence, the essay fits oddly into the series. However, we need more critics in possession of Zichy's analytic skills, evaluative courage, and high critical standards. * * * Early in Volume Seven, Ed Jewinski quotes Milton Wilson: "Acorn stands so obviously apart from the characteristic fashions of Canadian verse" (44). With the possible exception of Al Purdy, who independently created a fashion for what has now been characterized as "the Purdy poem," the remark might have been made of all the poets here. Milton Acorn himself, Alden Nowlan, James Reaney, and Phyllis Webb — even, with reservations, Purdy — are all, in a sense, "loners" who go their own way and work out their poetic salvation. All the more reason, then, why the critics who comment on these writers must find their own individual approaches that will prove most appropriate for the discussion of their chosen writer. Jewinski provides a solid and perceptive introduction to Acorn. While sympathetic towards the political attitudes of "The People's Poet," he refuses to accept party-line rant in lieu of poetry and constructs an admirably balanced view of Acorn's strengths and weaknesses. While in no way discouraging a response to Acorn the man, Jewinski is well aware that "the personality compels the reader to discuss intentions rather than achieved art, dialectic in theory, but not in specific works," and is properly concerned with the question of "whether the art . . . sustains the vision behind it" (35). He accurately describes the distinguishing feature of Acorn's poetry as "an eclecticism aimed at voicing everything from personal indignation to pri vate joy" (36), and is prepared to acknowledge "how politically naive and poetically bordering on propaganda Acorn can be" (49). The one place where he seems to waver is on the matter of representativeness. While admitting that Acorn's political verse is often weak, he still feels bound to argue that it is too central to be down-played. True enough, but Acorn wrote effectively committed poetry as well as versified political sermons. Here I have no hesitation in agreeing with Woodcock that there is no reason to protect that there is no reason to protect inferior work artifically, but that it is essential "to do justice to the fine poet who always warred with the bad preacher in Acorn's craggy body" (12). After all, we don't feel bound to represent Wordsworth by specimens of the Ecclesiastical Sonnets just because the older poet had a strange misapprehansion about their quality and significance. Still, Jewinski raises the important issues here and (despite a few sloppinesses which ECW Press ought to have caught, like the spelling "In Memorium" [68]!), can be read with profit by student and specialist alike. Michael Oliver's study of Alden Nowlan, while helpful, is somewhat uneven. At its best, it is decidedly valuable. Oliver realizes that one of the main problems in coming to terms with Nowlan's verse is understanding the relationship between his intensely local Maritime origins and his contribution to a larger Canadian culture. Another is the visible change that comes over his writing as the earlier poems in tight, traditional metres give way to the more relaxed, free-verse, conversational poems of his later years. Although his earlier pamphlet on the subject was subtitled "The Development of Alden Nowlan's Poetry," Oliver usefully stresses continuity here, and is valuable in his emphasis on what he calls Nowlan's sacramental vision. He is generally excellent on matters of biography and background, and I know of no study that gets closer to the heart of Nowlan's genius. At the same time, Oliver's touch can be uncertain. He is often fiercely regional in his allegiances, and, while this can be both refreshing and valuable, it can become troubling when he is more concerned with the number of "distinctly Maritime poems" (118) in a given volume than with their poetic quality. He is also a decidedly puzzling guide on the vexed question of influence. On one page he quotes Nowlan as claiming to belong to "the first generation of Canadian poets to be influenced . . . most directly by other Canadian poets" (84); on the next, Oliver classifies him as having most in common with John Sutherland's "more-American-than-British" First Statement school (85); and on the next, Nowlan is quoted again as saying: "In fact, [D. H.] Lawrence may have influenced me more than any other writer" (86). These statements may not in fact be irreconcilable, but Oliver offers the bemused reader little help in sorting out the confusion. I find myself most uneasy with Oliver's commentary, however, when he discusses Nowlan's prosody. Here the details are too often challengeable. Thus his claim that "God Sour the Milk of the Knacking Wench" and "Marian at the Pentecostal Meeting" are "written in traditional ballad stanzas with alternating lines of iambic tetrameter" (101) is hardly sufficient in itself, since Nowlan makes so many non-iambic substitutions that the ballad-norm becomes virtually unrecoguizable. Similarly he classifies "A Night Hawk Fell," "A Letter to My Sister," and "The Anatomy of Angels" as maintaining "tetrameter lines throughout" (101). Most of the lines in these poems are clearly in pentameter form and can only be classified otherwise if one counts accentual beats rather than metrical feet. Oliver's ideas of scansion on the next page are likewise dubious. He acknowledges, to be sure, that "another reader may disagree" (102), but there are limits. Take, for example, the following lines, as marked by Oliver:
It seems obvious to me that the most emphatic word in the whole stanza is "drools," yet this goes unstressed in Oliver's scheme. One discovers a little later that Oliver has a dubious theory about an equal number of stresses in the lines throughout the poem, but he can only establish this by iguoring "drools" and another fairly obvious stress on "blánket" in the fourth line. All this is unfortunate, especially since not enough attention is paid to accents and rhythms in current criticism of Canadian poetry. Inadequate discussions such as this suggest that even the basic principles may no longer be understood. Still, whatever reservations one may have, few readers are likely to read through this introduction to a poet neglected outside the Maritimes without intellectual profit. By contrast, honesty compels me to state that, once one has absorbed the information in the opening sections, Louis K. MacKendrick's essay on Al Purdy is a disaster — an almost classic example of how not to do it. In the section devoted to "Purdy's Works," I calculate that close to 140 poems are mentioned in the course of 37 pages. Small wonder that little is said about any of them. Although MacKendrick begins by asserting that "Purdy's poetic development is more evident through a chronological consideration than through a comprehensive analysis of its themes and techniques, which often denies a poet's emergent distinctions" (145), what he offers is little more than bland summary of content. No poem is analysed in any detail, and no discussion of Purdy's unique qualities as a vernacular poet is ever forthcoming. Here, for example, is all that MacKendrick says about one of Purdy's most moving and characteristic poems: "A major figure for Purdy was 'My Grandfather Talking — 30 Years Ago': the man, used to moonlight and woods, found people and their structures interfered. He was no longer able to get lost — just as he is unable to finish his thought" (160). No comment on the variations of tone, the superb reproduction of the rhythms of an individual voice, the exquisite control of verse-movement. I confess I found MacKendrick's relentless, uncritical, volume-by-volume descriptive formula almost unreadable. The extraordinary result is that Purdy's poetry is made to sound excruciatingly dull. Which is absurd. I must now confront the problem of James Reaney and Reaney criticism. Problem? Let me put it this way. In terms of poetry (the situation with regard to his plays is only slightly different), it is fair to say that Reaney's most prominent and influential critics over the years have been Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee, Ross Woodman, Germaine Warkentin, Jay Macpherson, Margaret Atwood, Stan Dragland, and now Richard Stingle. A strong team, doubtless, but one that is curiously, even revealingly homogeneous. All the commentators I have listed are advocates of an archetypal approach to literature and criticism, and are close friends and/or colleagues of Reaney himself. Indeed, Stingle takes considerable pains to make clear that he was an undergraduate friend of Reaney at the University of Toronto and later a colleague at Manitoba and Western (194). Now there is nothing wrong in critics writing about their friends — in the small world of Canadian literature this soon becomes almost inevitable — but the situation can lead to an almost hermetic defensiveness. Interestingly enough, commentary on Reaney from outside this charmed circle has been noticeably less enthusiastic. In his introduction here, for example, Wood cock devotes less space to Reaney than to the others, classifies him as "folkloric," and (presumably as a balance to Stingle) emphasizes reservations: "It is all very self-conscious, yet at the same time rather uncritical, as when Reaney yields . . . to the melodramatic urges that made him praise highly a poet of dubious quality like Isabella Valancy Crawford and a bad novelist like John Richardson" (15). As I have argued elsewhere, if claims for Reaney are to be persuasive they must be made by critics outside the Reaney circle (or, at the very least, by critics aware that his reputation outside is less assured). With all due respect to Stingle, I wish that the editors had chosen an outsider to write the study in this volume. As it is, we are offered the mixture as before from a critic who has already published an article with the revealing title, " 'all the old levels': Reaney and Frye." The strategies employed are often, to say the least, peculiar. Here is Stingle's account, quoted in full, of an unpublished play, Stereoscope, written for retired actors and performed in 1982:
Like most readers, I have not seen the play and have no access to the text. In such circumstances, some kind of plot narration may be desirable — but only plot narration? I have to report that it all seems to me — well, not to prevaricate — silly. Is it unfair to suggest that, where affirmations in favour of "a meaningful life" and "social action" are involved, characters named Una and Britomart might themselves be regarded as masks distanced from life? Is it irrelevant to protest that the creation of such a plot is in itself no guarantee of verbal or theatrical or intellectual quality? Does anyone expect that the unconverted will be persuaded by this sort of thing? There is also another matter upon which I feel bound to comment, even at the risk of apparent digression. In the sixth issue of this journal (Spring Summer 1980), I published an article in which I queried Reaney's procedures in the "Scrutumnus" section from A Suit of Nettles and took the opportunity to express certain reservations about his verse and the available criticism that discussed it. Stingle recoguizes the need to try to counter this. Fair enough. The passage in question represents an attack (inadequate and ill-informed, in my opinion) on F. R. Leavis and the critics he published in Scrutiny. That being so, one would expect Stingle to examine the evidence and show that I am somehow mistaken in my account of Leavisite principles. Not a bit of it. No writings of Leavis are named in either the text, notes, or bibliography. Instead, Stingle finds a passage in a book by Terry Eagleton in which Leavis and his followers are criticized. "The reasons for Reaney's response to Leavis seem clear," comments Stingle (202) — and that, apparently, is that. But it isn't. Eagleton's main point is that Leavis favoured language 'crammed with the physical textures of actual experience," and that other linguistic styles are valid. Though he expresses his point in a sarcastically hostile way in the passage as a whole, the argument seems to me unexceptionable. All it means, so far as Reaney is concerned, is that Leavis prefers one verse-tradition and Reaney another. Eagleton is not implying that Leavis's side is wrong and Reaney's right — he is merely identifying, to his own satisfaction, the critical-cum-ideological assumptions that underlie Leavis's viewpoint. So far, so good. But then Eagleton slips badly (and so does Stingle by invoking so inadequate an authority). Eagleton claims that, by such means, writers like Milton "could be shown the door" and (accord ing to Stingle's summary) that Leavis demoted "most of the Victorian novelists" to secondary rank (202). The "showing the door" phrase is vulgar and inadequate in itself, since Leavis never dismissed Milton in this way (I made this point, with specific references to Leavis's texts, in my original article). What "most of the Victorian novelists" means is vague — much Victorian fiction, like that of any age, has proven expendable — but The Great Tradition centres upon the nineteenth century, especially George Eliot, and although the Leavises originally underestimated Dickens, they made ample amends in their brilliant study Dickens the Novelist (published thirteen years before Eagleton's comment). Eagleton's grasp of what Leavis stood for is demonstrably shaky. Stingle's strategy naturally troubles me, since Reaney advocates, reading his commentary without any first-hand knowledge of what is involved, will all too probably exclaim "Aha, then Keith was wrong!" — and consider the matter closed. But it is by no means closed. This is just one example of the general failure on the part of Reaney critics to address the issues that trouble those outside the magnetic field of Victorian College. As usual, there is plenty of reference to design and system ("The first two sections [of The Red Heart] are true to the two Blakean antithetical faces of the poetic self" [215]; "Effie [in A Suit of Nettles] speakes from Yeats's Condition of Fire in A Vision" [221]), little concern with texture, nuance, achieved statement. Students, I fear, are more likely to be bemused then stimulated. By a happy accident of alphabet, however, the best essay in this volume comes at the end. John F. Hulcoop begins his study of Phyllis Webb as follows: "Phyllis Webb writes with her left hand, a fact most biographers might, understandably, overlook" (249). Readers are immediately arrested by an original approach; their intellectual expectations have already been aroused. Before they have read very far, they acknowledge Hulcoop as someone expertly qualified to write on this subject, not only because his knowledge of Webb's writings is veritably encyclopedic but because he is capable of making basic discriminations between the central and the peripheral. Moreover, he provides abundant evidence of the full understanding of the poetic world to which Webb belongs. Webb is, surely, the most intellectually astute of all the poets discussed in this volume. She may lack the capacity to express a deep and enduring humanity that we find in Nowlan and Purdy, but nowhere else do readers encounter someone with so fully developed a consciousness. It is important to insist, I think, that Hulcoop demonstrates an intellectual urgency in Webb that Stingle fails to demonstrate in Reaney. She is, admittedly, a difficult poet — sometimes even frustratingly so — but Hulcoop patiently prepares his readers to attain a level from which they can appreciate her. Hence his careful distinction between "tradition" and "milieu" (260); his expert placing of her work between the Scylla of regionalism and the Charybdis of nationalism (261); his helpful separation (without in any way implying a comparative value-judgment that in this case would be clearly inappropriate) between Webb's polytonal and Atwood's monotonal poetic voice (275); his insistence that half of poetry is "its emotional power to charm" and half "its intellectual power to 'tease us out of thought,' to spell bind with mind-riddles" (276). He also wrestles manfully — I use the word deliberately — with Webb's feminist concerns which (and Hulcoop would be the first to admit that, like myself, he is less than ideally equipped to adjudicate this matter) seem so much more urgent and cogent than those proclaimed by her more vociferous contemporaries. Hulcoop's approach, then, is practical but general. Although he offers a detailed and perceptive consideration of Naked Poems, he doesn't in the main proceed by means of close readings of individual texts in the manner I commended while discussing Golfman on Klein and Darling on Smith. This is because he realizes that readers of Webb's work must move, "like the poet's world, in circles" (285). It is an index of Hulcoop's quality that he helps readers to move smoothly into the orbits of these circles. * * * In the early days of the Canadian Writers and Their Works series, I remember one of the editors telling me that they were having initial difficulty with government funding because the grant-assigning powers-that-be had doubts about supporting a series that seemed designed (I am paraphrasing here but the tone is, I believe, accurate) "only for students." There are two equally cogent responses to this so-called reasoning: first, where matters of intelligence and subtlety are concerned, we are all students (sometimes fumbling ones); second, there is no more important task than initiating young students into sound methods and appropriate strategies. I have complained before of reviewers who criticize an inadequate book — as they believe, gently — by judging it all right for students but not up to the standards of some sort of specialist elite. As an argument (to quote Hamlet on another subject), "that's villainous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it." As a general rule, poor books designed for beginning students are not merely useless but culpably harmful. I have been critical about some of the essays here because I believe that all readers, beginning students and seasoned experts alike, deserve the highest standards of scholarly thoroughness and literary-critical sensitivity — and also because some writers, Golfman and Hulcoop most conspicuously, have set a standard. Yet we must, I suppose, look on the bright side. There is much to commend in these volumes. Moreover, the serious teacher and supervisor will be able to use these books creatively — by showing beginning students how to discriminate between excellence and anything less than excellence when varied examples of "criticism in practice" are to be found so conveniently side by side. W. J. Keith |