The Year's Work
in Canadian Poetry Studies: 1984
In the following bibliography of criticism on
English-Canadian poetry published in 1984, journal articles have been summarized or
abstracted according to the requirements imposed by the nature of the material.
Full-length studies and interviews have also been included, generally without summational
comment.
The annotated checklists
of the Year's Work in Canadian Poetry Studies for 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981,
1982, and 1983 can be found in Nos. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14 of Canadian Poetry.
PRE-CONFEDERATION
Sangster, Charles St. Lawrence and the
Saguenay, and Other
Poems. Revised edition. Edited by Frank M. Tierney.
Ottawa:
Tecumseh Press, 1984. 463 pp.
Tierney's "Introduction" places
Sangster in the context of his times and of subsequent critical judgment and also
delineates major themes of "The St. Lawrence and the Saguenay" and the four
sections of miscellaneous poems included in the collection. Revisions, editorial and
publishing history are documented, and an extensive set of textual notes comprises nearly
half the volume.
CONFEDERATION
[Bentley, D.M.R.]. "Minor Poets of a
Superior Order." [Preface]
Canadian Poetry, no. 14 (Spring/Summer 1984), [v]-[viii].
Suggesting that the presence of Carman, Lampman,
D.C. Scott and other poets of the Confederation period constitutes a tradition which has
been insufficiently acknowledged, Bentley specifically diagrams Carman's tangents with
Stevens, Williams, Pound, Frost, and other "major" Americans and Britons as
divergent as Wilde, Swinburne, and P.G. Wodehouse.
_________. "A Well-wrought Clay: Francis
Sherman's 'In
Memorbilia Mortis.' " Essays on Canadian Writing, no.
30
(Winter 1984-85), 320-338.
Bentley attempts to rescue Sherman from an
undeserved obscurity by offering an analysis of his most notable work. Neglected in part
because of an extra-Canadian Pre-Raphaelite influence, Sherman achieved a strength and
grace of style in this pastoral elegy which mark him as a significant transitional figure
in 19th-20th century Canadian poetry.
Beasai, Diane. "Counterfeiting
Hindsight." World Literature
Written in English, 23:2 (Spring 1984), 353-366.
The self-conscious (and often self-deceiving,
self-congratulatory) "newness" of Canadian literature often leads to a selective
historicity. Bessai takes Frye's assessment of E.J. Pratt as a channelling of perspective
which has led to restriction both in critical vocabulary and in appreciation of the
imaginative breadth and thematic contours of earlier poetry. The
modernist/environmentalist approach, Bessai maintains, is limited and arbitrary, robbing
the Canadian literary heritage of much of its historical and artistic vitality a
point she demonstrates through specific attention to the works of Charles G.D. Roberts.
Burns, Robert Alan. "Crawford and Gounod:
Ambiguity and Irony
in Malcolm's Katie." Canadian Poetry,
no. 15 (Fall/Winter 1984),
1-30.
Burns revises conventional assessments of Malcolm's
Katie, going beyond the obvious Tennysonian influences to redate the poem in the
author's maturity and, building on an extensive analysis, to draw thematic and stylistic
comparisons with Gounod's opera Mireille which suggest the French work as a source.
Clever, Glenn, ed. The Sir Charles G.D.
Roberts Symposium.
Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984. (Reappraisals:
Canadian Writers, 10) xiv, 249 pp.
Papers presented at a symposium held at the
University of Ottawa in April 1983. Contributors include: J.C. Adams, L. Boone, F.
Cogswell, T. Ware, D.M.R. Bentley, D. Conway, L. McLeod, R.A. Burns, E. Waterston, W.
Owen, T. Whalen, R.D. Mathews, M. Hornyansky, L. R. Early, and E. Jewinski.
De Mille, James. "James De Mille's 'Class
Poem 1854.' " Edited
and introduced by Patricia Monk. Canadian Poetry, no.
15
(Fall/Winter 1984), 61-75.
Monk provides a precisely dated text of the poem
with notes and critical commentary explaining local, historical, personal, and literary
allusions and suggesting its importance as an early composition.
Early, L.R. "A Chronology of Lampman's
Poems." Canadian Poetry,
no. 14 (Spring/Summer 1984), 75-87.
In his introduction, Early suggests that a
chronological notation may reveal shifting emphases and concerns in Lampman's imaginative
development.
Kennerley, Mitchell. "Kinnerley on
Carman." Edited and introduced
by H. Pearson Gundy. Canadian Poetry, no. 14
(Spring/Summer
1984), 69-74.
Gundy's introduction sets the context of
Kennerley's 1932 letter of frank and "unadorned" recollections, focussing on its
discussion of Carman's relationship with Mrs. Mary Perry King.
Kilpatrick, R.S. "Scott's 'Night Hymns on
Lake Nipigon': 'Matins'
in the Northern Midnight." Canadian Poetry, no. 14
(Spring/
Summer 1984), 64-68.
Kilpatrick extends Carolyn Roberts' tracing of
"Night Hymns" to the Gregorian Sapphics back through possible Latin sources,
reflected in illusion and structure, in the Matin song rising "in the midnight"
of pre-dawn blackness to arouse the faithful to their prayers.
MacMillan, Carrie, ed. The Proceedings of the
Sir Charles G.D.
Roberts Symposium, Mount Allison University.
Sackville: Centre
for Canadian Studies, Mount Allison University; Halifax: Nimbus
Publishing Limited, 1984. (Anchorage Series, 1) 129 pp.
Papers presented at a symposium sponsored by the
Centre for Canadian Studies in October 1982. Contributors include: D. Conway, D.M.R.
Bentley, D. Jackel, W.J. Keith, G. Adams, J. Gold, J. Moss, J. Doyle, and F. Cogswell.
McLeod, Les. "Canadian Post-Romanticism: The
Context of Late
Nineteenth-Century Canadian Poetry." Canadian Poetry,
no. 14
(Spring/Summer 1984), 1-37.
McLeod revises the conventional
Romantic-Victorian-Confederation categorization of late 19th century Canadian poetry in
the direction of a "Post-Romanticism" of discontinuity with nature and a
"radical inward turning" which discovers the self as separate from the natural
environment. Though orthodox in their "Transcendental" theories, these poets'
works thwarted rather than endorsed a pathetic fallacy in a destruction of Romantic
harmonies. McLeod demonstrates the estrangement of personae from nature in
Lampman's "April" and "In November" and points to the natural patterns
of confinement and "ambush" in Scott's "Adagio" and "November
Pansy." In Canadian poetry, he asserts, the urge for union with nature is ultimately
a death wish.
Stephenson, Glennis. "The Bitter-Sweet Rose:
The Conception of
Woman in Roberts' The Book of the Rose." Canadian
Poetry, no.
14 (Spring/Summer 1984), 53-63.
Drawing from seven representative poems,
Stephenson offers a collective assessment of Roberts' love poetry in The Book of the
Rose (1903), diagramming a siren-mother-goddess identity which makes woman an object
of alternating fright, comfort, and fascination and suggesting that she becomes in her
ambivalence a symbol of life itself.
Ware, Tracy. "The Integrity of Carman's Low
Tide on Grande Pré."
Canadian Poetry, no. 14 (Spring/Summer 1984),
38-52.
Carman's first collection is viewed as a book,
suggesting both unity and development in the progression of the poems. Ware examines
the title poem's natural and temporal dimensions, revising previous interpretations and
arguing a movement "from memory to meditation" which becomes the controlling
structure of the volume as a whole.
MODERN
Banting, Pamela. "Dorothy Livesay's
Notations of Love and the Dance
of the Female Poet in Relation to Language." CV II,
8:3 (September
1984), 14-18.
The "informing tension between embrace and
flight" from the domestic makes the continuity of Livesay's work a commentary on the
female writer's role in a patriarchal culture. Passivity is reflected in a
"phallologocentric" language which must be transcended and rediscovered through
a new set of signs, these focussing in the image of the dance.
Bastein, Friedel H. "'A European Writer in
Canada': A Brief Intro-
duction to the Life and Work of Miriam Waddington." In
Konrad
Gross and Wolfgang Klooss, eds., Voices from Distant Lands:
Poetry in the Commonwealth. Würzburg: Königshausen
und
Neumann, 1983, 94-97.
A contextual introduction to the poet for foreign
readers emphasizing major humanistic themes in Waddington's work and discussing her
immigrant heritage in the Russian Jewish communities of Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Montreal,
her years at the University of Toronto, and her career as poet and teacher.
Bentley, D.M.R. "A Nightmare Ordered: A.M.
Klein's 'Portrait of
the Poet as Landscape.' " Essays on Canadian Writing,
no. 28
(Spring 1984), 1-45.
Bentley confronts Klein's "crowning
achievement" by way of providing a systematic analysis of a poem which transcends the
"wasteland" by establishing pattern in an apparently chaotic modern world.
Structural and thematic gestures toward order ultimately sustain a vision stressing the
continuity of art and the artist, and the design implicit in the act of creation as
self-construction, the poet building himself in the context of his times.
Fox, C.J. Wyndham Lewis and E.J.
Pratt: A Convergence of
Strangers. St. John's, Nfld.: Memorial University, [1984].
(Pratt Lecture 1983) 16 pp.
Fox discusses these exactly contemporary writers
in terms of a shared context of Modernism in its candour, spatial preoccupations, sense of
the mechanistic and grasp of the nature of media influence. Both aliens from the cultural
mainstream, both savoured its artifacts as keys to their own work.
Gustafson, Ralph. A Literary Friendship: The
Correspondence
of Ralph Gustafson and W.W.E. Ross.
Edited and with an intro-
duction by Bruce Whiteman. Toronto: ECW Press, 1984. [120] pp.
Hillis, Doris. "CA&B Profile: Towards
the Perfect Understanding."
Canadian Author & Bookman, 59:2 (Winter
1984), 1-2.
Hillis reports on an extended conversation with
John Hicks, acknowledging the influence of sacred and liturgical music in his poetry.
Johnson, James F. "Brébeuf and His
Brethren and Towards the
Last Spike: The Two Halves of Pratt's National Epic." Essays
on Canadian Writing, no. 29 (Summer 1984), 142-151.
Johnson celebrates the epic impulse and
"largeness of conception" in Pratt's major works, suggesting that their
historical vision and westward orientation represent a triumph of faith and order, tragic
and comic in turn, against a threatening, often chaotic world.
Keitner, Wendy. "Canadian Women Poets and
the Syndrome of
the Female Man: A Note on the Poetry of Audrey Alexandra
Brown and Anne Wilkinson." Room of One's
Own, 8:4 (1984),
76-81.
In the content of a masculine literary tradition
emblematized by Klein's Adamic "Portrait of the Poet as Landscape," Keitner
states that Brown's utilization of a male persona and embrace of masculine/feminine
stereotypes constitute a "rejection of the female point of view." Although
Wilkinson, in "Lens," chooses a female persona, she finally capitulates to
masculine primacy in art by seeking "validation as an honorary (female) man."
Kertzer, J.M. "Personality and Authority:
A.M. Klein's Self-Portrait."
Canadian Poetry, no. 15 (Fall/Winter 1984),
31-47.
Kertzer explores Klein's use of tradition, myth,
and archetype to locate himself within a Jewish cultural setting he found both defining
and subverting of the individual: self. As the personal yields to the collective identity,
the authority authenticity of a distinct self are put in conflict with the very faith
which should sustain them.
Pitt, David G. E.J. Pratt: The Truant Years,
1882-1927. Toronto;
Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 1984. xix, 415 pp.
Pollock, Zailig, introd. [A.M. Klein's Montreal
Issue] Journal of
Canadian Studies, 19:2 (Summer 1984). 172 pp.
Collection of essays focussing on Klein's context
of place and time with attention to matters Jewish and Québécois. Contributors include:
Z. Pollock, W. Walsh, N. Kattan, L. Edel, D.M.R. Bentley, L.L. Ferguson, A. Fuerstenberg,
D. Kaufman, G. Tulchinsky, P. Anctil, and M. Horn.
Ricou, Laurie. "The Naive Eye in the Poetry
of Dorothy Livesay,
P.K. Page, and Miriam Waddington." In Konrad Gross and
Wolfgang Klooss, eds., Voices from Distant Lands:
Poetry
in the Commonwealth. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann,
1983, 108-114.
Ricou treats the convention of forbidding
Canadian landscape as an opportunity for fresh vision in Livesay, Page, and Waddington,
suggesting that a child's perspective of "newness" finds both thematic and
stylistic expression in "the intimate excitement of first discovery" in their
works.
Spiro, Solomon J. Tapestry for Designs: Judaic
Allusions in The
Second Scroll and in the Collected Poems of A.M.
Klein.
Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1984. ix,
380 pp.
Sutherland, Fraser. "A.K.A. Earle Birney. [A
Portrait of the Poet at
80.]" Books in Canada, 13:5 (May 1984),
7-10.
_______. John Glassco: An Essay and
Bibliography. Downsview,
Ont.: ECW Press, 1984. 121 pp.
Includes an annotated bibliography of
manuscripts, primary and secondary sources published up to Glassco's death in 1981, pp.
47-121.
Watt, F.W. "The Gigantomachy of E.J.
Pratt." University of Toronto
Quarterly, 54:2 (Winter 1984-85), [127]-147.
Watt attempts to define Pratt's poetic magnitude
by examining the dimensions of first his Newfoundland Verse poems (1923) in the
context of a cosmic and a national history and suggesting that later, more personal works
found their origin in familial tensions augmented by religious feeling. Traditional
"paths" are explored in their implications, moving toward temporal and spiritual
resolutions, as the poet looked about his times to achieve a fusion of historical
circumstance and religious mythology.
Whiteman, Bruce. Collected Poems of Raymond
Souster: Biblio-
graphy. [Ottawa]: Oberon Press, c1984. 240 pp.
A descriptive bibliography of Souster's work with
secondary sources and reviews.
CONTEMPORARY
Amprimoz, Alexandre L. "Thanatos as the
Immigrant: Italo-
Canadian Poetry Today." CV II, 8:1
(May 1984), 34-38.
Amprimoz searches for "a contemporary
Italo-Canadian poetic discourse," finding it in the stridency of clashing languages
as a key to colliding cultures. Len Gasparini's IL Sangue, dedicated/addressed
to Pier Giorgio DiCicco, is the operative text, in which images of Italian rurality and
vitality are set against the cancerous "iron skyline" of contemporary Canada.
These nostalgic visions of a lost world correspond to the cultural death of Italian poets
who assimilate themselves into the Canadian mainstream.
[Baxter, Meaghan, Jeff Derksen, and Angela
Hryniuk ] "An Inter-
view with Fred Wah." Writing, no. 9 (Spring
1984), 45-49.
Belyea, Barbara, and Estelle Dansereau, eds. Driving
Home: A
Dialogue Between Writers and Readers. Waterloo:
Published
by Wilfrid Laurier University Press for The Calgary Institute
for the Humanities, 1984. xiii, 96 pp.
Essays examining contemporary Canadian literary
arts, including contributions from E.D. Blodgett, C. Wiseman, D.G. Jones, P. Stevens, and
others.
Bertholf, Robert J., ed. [Canadian Poetry
Festival Issue] Credences:
A Journal of Twentieth Century Poetry and Poetics,
new ser., 2:
2-3 (Fall/Winter 1983). 303 pp.
Includes lectures delivered at the Canadian
Poetry Festival, State University of New York at Buffalo, 15-21 October 1980 on
"Canadian Poetry, Roots & New Directions" (D.G. Jones), "Reaney's
Region" (G. Bowering), "Language Writing: From Productive to Libidinal
Economy" (S. McCaffery) as well as discussions on "The Roots of Present
Writing" and "The State of Canadian Poetry" by Marlatt, Bowering, Wah,
Nichol, McCaffery, Atwood, bissett, Ondaatje, Jones, and others.
Billings, Robert. "A Conversation with Roo
Borson." Waves, 12:
2-3 (Winter 1984), 5-16.
Brockwell, Stephen. "An Interview with Peter
Van Toorn." Rubicon,
no. 3 (Summer 1984), 156-176.
Burke, Anne. "Robert Kroetsch: A Man of
Contraries." Cross-
Canada Writers' Quarterly, 6:3 (1984), 7, 30-31.
Integrating Kroetsch's publishing history and
guiding impulses, this profile centres primarily upon thematic developments in his novels,
stories and criticism, though reference is made to The Ledger, Seed Catalogue,
and Field Notes.
Carey, Barbara. "WQ Interview with Bronwen
Wallace." Cross-
Canada Writers' Quarterly, 6:4 (1984), 3-4,
29.
Casey, Jane. "An Interview with Kristjana
Gunnars." CV II, 8:3
(September 1984), 36-39.
Choyce, Lesley. "Alden Nowlan
Interview." Pottersfield Portfolio,
5 (1983-84), 2-3.
Davey, Frank. Margaret Atwood: A Feminist
Poetics. Vancouver:
Talon-books, 1984. (New Canadian Criticism Series) 178 pp.
_______. ed. [Robert Kroetsch Issue] Open
Letter, ser. 5, nos. 8-9
(Sumner/Fall 1984). 207 pp.
Issue devoted to writing by and about Kroetsch,
including essays on poetry, fiction, and criticism. Poetic focus centres upon The
Ledger (D. McKay), Field Notes (R. Brown; S. Neuman; E.D. Blodgett) and
interview with Kroetsch concerning The Sad Phoenician (S. Kamboureli).
Davies, Cory Bieman, and Catherine Ross.
"Re-realizing Mother
Goose: An Interview with Dennis Lee on Jelly Belly."
Canadian
Children's Literature, no. 33 (1984), 6-14.
Demchuk, David. "Holding Two Ropes: An
Interview with
Kristjana Gunnars." Prairie Fire, 5:2-3
(nos. 27-28) (Spring
1984), 32-37.
Draper, Gary. "Interview [with] David
McFadden." Books in
Canada, 13:8 (October 1984), 29-31.
Enright, Robert. "What's So Big About Space?
A Conversation with
Jim Green." Arts Manitoba, 3:4 (Fall
1984), 54-55.
Estok, Michael. "A Redneck's Dance: Patrick
Lane's Quest for
Order". NeWest Review, 9:7 (March
1984), 11, 19.
Estok discusses Lane's poetic stance as "an
outsider" and the consequent immediacy this lends to his work. Essentially an
overview of Lane's recent poetry, the article suggests a more subdued voice evolving
through the poet's trip to China.
Fetherling, Doug. "Interview [with] Leonard
Cohen." Books in
Canada, 13:7 (August/September 1984), 20-30.
Fulford, Robert. "By Persons Unknown. A New
Generation of
Canadian Poets Has Emerged Whose Accomplishments Greatly
Exceed Their Reputations." Saturday Night,
99:3 (no. 3648)
(March 1984), 9, 11.
Fulford calls the attention of Saturday Night readers
to major contemporary Canadian poets (Christopher Dewdney, Robert Bringhurst, Pier Giorgio
DiCicco, Roo Borson, David Solway, David Donnell, and Libby Scheier) by way of suggesting
that a new generation of significant artists has arisen.
Garebian, Keith. "Dewdney's Science." Canadian
Forum, 64-740
(June/July 1984), 32-34.
Garebian discusses Predators of the Adoration (1983)
as an exploration of the relationship between science and poetry which goes beyond the
mere analogical/referential connections drawn by earlier poets. Dewdney's work
contains codes and inventories which go beyond setting and symbol to fuse scientific and
lyrical languages in the poetic imagination.
Harding, R.F. Gillian. "Iconic Mythopoeia in
MacEwen's The T.E.
Lawrence Poems." Studies in Canadian Literature,
9:1 (1984),
95-107.
Harding offers an iconographical explication of
MacEwen's 1982 volume, exploring the relationships between art and consciousness as
focussed in images of water, desert, stone, mirage, castle, garden, and camera.
Animals often function as psychic projections, Harding maintains, and the tensions between
home and the creation-destruction of war form a pervasive dialectic.
Hillis, Doris. "A Conversation with Anne
Szumigalski." Dandelion,
10:1 (Spring/Summer 1983), 5-17.
_______. "An Interview with Patrick
Lane." West Coast Review, 18:
4 (April 1984), 19-28.
Johnson, Jay. " 'Où en est le coeur de
l'homme': la poésie de Gary
Geddes." Ellipse, no. 32 (1984), 86-95.
Mid-career assessment of Geddes, stressing his work as documentary / narrative
historicity and reaching for a context of personal, familial, regional, and national
definition.
Knight, Alan R. "The Dilemma of the Public
Critic; Or, Does
George Bowering Have A Way With Words." Studies
in
Canadian Literature, 9:1 (1984), 5-19.
Propounding Frye's and Woodcock's ideas of the
"public critic" as an intelligent and responsive man of taste, Knight assesses
Bowering's collection of essays as the author's forging of a personal poetic. Bowering's
essay on Lionel Kearns draws upon the Black Mountain ideals of movement and flux, but
misreadings caused by theoretical adherence, Knight argues, result in restrictive and
inadequate analyses.
Layton, Irving. Waiting for the Messiah." Canadian
Literature,
no. 101 (Summer 1984), 7-14.
Layton reminisces on his birth into "a world
of fable" and its imaginative influences upon him and on the Jewish-French-Canadian
tensions resolved in the near-simultaneous deaths of his own father and that of a
particularly hostile neighbour.
Mandel, Charles. "Longspoon Press." NeWest
Review, 9:6 (February
1984), 8-9, 22.
A descriptive history and review of the
publications of the Edmonton small press formed in 1980.
Mandel, Eli. "The Post Structural Scene in
Contemporary Canadian
Poetry: A Note." Poetry Canada Review, 5:4
(Summer 1984), 10.
Mandel searches out a theory of influence to
account for the volume and diversity of contemporary Canadian poetry and finds it in a
"history of resentments" through which each generation of poets rewrote the work
of its forebears, the postmodernists now reconstructing literary modernism.
Martin Donald. "Interview [with Irving
Layton]." Books in Canada,
13:3 (March 1984), 26-28.
McCaffery, Steve, et al. "Sound
Poetry: A Statement by the Four
Horsemen: Steve McCaffery, Paul Dutton, bp Nichol, Raphael
Barreto-Rivera." Poetry Canada Review, 5:3
(Spring 1984), 10.
Describes the group's formation in 1970, its
roots and career, and discusses the term "sound poetry."
Meyer, Bruce. "The Saint Inside: Leonard
Cohen's Poetry of Hagiology."
Cross-Canada Writers' Quarterly, 6:2 (1984), 3, 24.
Using the controlling image of a self-chronicling
martyr, Meyer traces Cohen's stages of "saintly" evolution from the innocence of
Let Us Compare Mythologies through a death and rebirth in Death of a Lady's
Man to the "educated innocence" which should follow as the poet re-emerges
from a prolonged period of silence.
Miki, Roy. "Prairie Poetics: An Interchange
with Eli Mandel and
Robert Kroetsch." Dandelion, 10:2 (Fall/Winter
1983), 82-92.
Discussion of the correspondence of sensibility
between Prairie and West Coast poets, touching upon the influence of the Tish group
and the prairies' sense of visual "non-place" which offers a "ground for
deconstruction" for the literary consciousness.
Mundwiler, Leslie. Michael Ondaatje: Word,
Image, Imagination.
Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1984. (New Canadian Criticism
Series)
160 pp.
Munton, Ann. "The Structural Horizons of
Prairie Poetics: The Long
Poem, Eli Mandel, Andrew Suknaski, and Robert Kroetsch."
Dalhousie Review, 63:1 (Spring 1983), [69]-97.
Regional focus keys this article on the search
for language appropriate to landscape. Visionary goals escape strict linguistic
structures, but all emphasize process as an expression of Western openness of life and a
consciousness of inventing a sense of place in basic, elemental forms.
Muscott, Neil. "Interview with Roo
Borson." Literary Review
(Writers' Workshop, University of Western Ontario),
[2](1984),
[55]-58.
Nodelman, Perry. "Cadence and Nonsense:
Dennis Lee's Poems
for Children and for Adults." Canadian Children's
Literature,
no. 33 (1984), 22-31.
Departing from the seeming dismissal of Lee's
poetry for children in Tasks of Passion: Dennis Lee at Mid-Career (1982),
Nodelman demonstrates the importance of these "absurdist fantasies" and
"anarchic inversions" in the larger cadences of his work as a whole. The
meditative adult finds a balance in the liberated poet of childhood who choreographs
collisions of form and meaning which suggest the limits of both.
O'Brien, Peter. "An Interview with Erin
Mouré." Rubicon, no. 3
(Summer 1984), 24-44.
Powe, B.W. A Climate Charged. Oakville:
Mosaic Press, 1984.
196 pp.
A collection of essays (written 1981-1983) on
Canadian writing, including discussions of Layton, Atwood, and Cohen.
_______. "The Endless Confessions of a
Lady's Man." Cross-
Canada Writers' Quarterly, 6:2 (1984), 4-8, 26.
Powe suggests that the confessional element and
personal mythos which govern Cohen's work have brought about a focus on the self which has
drained private into public personality and led to a solipsistic nihilism. The essay
points to possibilities for transcendence in Death of a Lady's Man, seeing
some hints in "Stanzas for H[enry]M[oscovitch]," 1983.
Reid, Monty. "Choosing Control: An Interview
with Claire Harris."
Waves, 13:1 (Fall 1984). 36-41.
Rosenberg, Jerome H. Margaret Atwood. Boston:
Twayne
Publishers, 1984. (Twayne's World Authors Series, 740) [xi],
184 pp.
Scobie, Stephen. bp Nichol: What History
Teaches. Vancouver:
Talonbooks, 1984. (New Canadian Criticism Series) 153 pp.
Smith, Patricia Keeney. "WQ Interview with
Robert Kroetsch."
Cross-Canada Writers' Quarterly, 6:3 (1984),
3-5, 29.
Stubbs, Andrew, and Jeanette Seim. "Anne
Marriott: Frontier Poet."
Canadian Poetry, no. 15 (Fall/Winter 1984), 48-60.
Beginning with an acknowledgment of the
documentary quality of the early The Wind Our Enemy, Stubbs and Seim suggest
that lyrical elements fuse with narrative structure to enact the imaginative
confrontations on metaphorical landscapes of borders, margins, and frontiers which form
the substance of Marriott's later work in The Circular Coast.
Thesen, Sharon. "Interview: Barry
McKinnon." Capilano Review,
no. 32 (1984), 20-29.
_______. "Interview: David PhiIlips." Capitano
Reuiew, no. 32
(1984), 56-67.
Thompson, M.A. "Jelly Belly in the
Perilous Forest." Canadian
Children's Literature, no. 33 (1984), 15-21.
A personal response to Dennis Lee's Jelly
Belly (1983) which suggests Lee is adopting a direction pandering to the
adult/commercial market and disregarding the moral/spiritual obligations toward his
youthful audience.
Wade, Barbara. "A Way with Words."
[Profile of sean o huigin]
Books in Canada, 13:10 (December 1984), 6-8.
A discussion of o huigin's efforts to engage the
creative imagination of children in the writing and performance of his works.
Wayman, Tom. "Work Poems." Canadian
Literature, no. 101
(Summer 1984), 171-176.
Wayman celebrates recent collections of
"work poetry" in light of recent neglect by more "mainstream" national
anthologies, such as Atwood's New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse and Newlove's Canadian
Poetry: The Modern Era.
[Wayne, Joyce] "Q&Q Interview: Leonard
Cohen." Quill & Quire,
50:5 (May 1984), 4-6.
Woodcock, George. "Don't Ever Ask for the
True Story; Or, Second
Thoughts on Autobiography." Essays on Canadian Writing,
no. 29
(Summer 1984), 16-25.
Woodcock ruminates on the "resonant
borderlines between documentary and fiction" in autobiographical self-construction
using Orwell's recasting of his life as a salient example and casting glances towards
himself.
GENERAL STUDIES
Cumming, Peter. "A Fresh Image for the
Fiddlehead Tradition." Quill
& Quire, 50:3 (March 1984), 56-57.
Chronicles the history and directions under a
succession of editors from 1945 to the present, including its branching into Fiddlehead
Poetry Books and the new Goose Lane Editions.
Index to Canadian Poetry in English. Compiled
and edited by Jane
McQuarrie, Anne Mercer, and Gordon Ripley. Toronto: Reference
Press, 1984. 367 pp.
Provides title and first-line, author, and
subject indexes to Canadian poetry, "indexing about seven thousand poems in fifty-one
collections" published 1930-1984,
Meyer, Bruce, and Brian O'Riordan. In Their
Words: Interviews
with Fourteen Canadian Writers. Toronto: House of
Anansi Press,
1984. 211 pp.
Includes interviews with Acorn, Borson, Cohen,
Layton, Livesay, MacEwen, Mandel, Purdy, Reaney, Smart, and Souster.
Mezei, Kathy. "The Scales of Translation:
The English-Canadian
Poet as Literal Translator." University of Ottawa
Quarterly,
54:2 (April/June, 1984), [63]-84.
Through examples from Lapointe, Hébert, Garneau
and others, Mezei explores the range from literal to free, interpretive translation in
French-English Canadian poetry and the inherent duality of obligations pressed upon the
translator, finding her models for "effective communion" in Glassco, F.R. Scott,
D.G. Jones, and the Ellipse circle.
Moss, John. "Landscape, Untitled." Essays
on Canadian Writing,
no. 29 (Summer 1984), 26-47.
Moss looks at early Canadian poetry in the Adamic
context of naming as the first key to possession of experience, suggesting that the
discontinuity of an established language with a new landscape fostered first ineptitude
and ultimately poetic authenticity.
New, W.H., ed. Canadian Writers in 1984: The
25th Anniversary
Issue of Canadian Literature. Vancouver:
University of British
Columbia Press, c1984. 376 pp.
Also published as Canadian Literature, no.
100 (Spring 1984) and essentially a forum for the celebration of literature in Canada on
the occasion of Canadian Literature's 25th anniversary. Writing creatively,
critically, and speculatively, the contributors include over sixty Canadian poets.
Norris, Ken. The Little Magazine in Canada
1925-80: Its Role
in the Development of Modernism and Post-Modernism
in
Canadian Poetry. Toronto: ECW Press, c1984. 203 pp.
Stouck, David. Major Canadian Authors: A
Critical Introduction.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. xii, 308 pp.
Includes essays on the following poets: Lampman,
Pratt, Birney, Klein, Layton, Avison, and Purdy.
Thompson, Lee Briscoe. "Lands Without
Ghosts: Canadian and
Australian Historical Poetry." In Dieter Riemenschneider,
ed.,
The History and Historiography of Commonwealth
Literature.
Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1983, [165]-175.
The presence of vastness and absence of specific
tradition bind Australian and Canadian poetry in Thompson's analysis, as he finds a
corresponding proclivity for historical narrative to justify a sense of national
formlessness. The search for colonial uniqueness usually ignores native peoples in an
evolution toward epic mythology (Brébeuf and Towards the Last Spike in
Canada; balladry and convict myths in Australia). Mid-century nationalism in both
countries leads to re-historicising through personae, with a contemporary
return to the personal mythologies of the poets themselves.
Mary Ann Jameson |