Preview: An Introduction and Index

by Don Precosky

INTRODUCTION

The full story of the slow transition of Canadian poetry from nineteenth-century Romanticism to Modernism, a transition which stretched from the 'twenties to the 'forties, is still to be written. When it is, more than one chapter will have to be devoted to the magazines which gave pioneer modernists such as Pratt, the McGill Group, Anderson, Page, Layton, and many others a place to publish their experiments. The titles of these magazines are familiar to anyone who has an interest in Canadian literary history. They include The Canadian Forum, The McGill Daily Literary Supplement, The McGill Fortnightly Review, The Canadian Mercury, Contemporary Verse, First Statement, and Preview. The last three all appeared during the Second World War, and it is with one of them, Preview, that this piece is concerned.

    According to Neufville Shaw, one of the founders, "what started Preview. . . was a challenge from Patrick Anderson." The challenge came in the form of Anderson's criticism of Montreal's cultural environment. Shaw reminisces:

I suppose all of us Montrealers had been challenged by the English; we had been told that we hadn't got anything like the English tavern, hadn't got anything like cheap ballet, cheap theatre, and Patrick was doing this to me one night, he was baiting me . . . he said "You know we wouldn't be spending an evening just wasting our time . . . we would be founding a magazine."¹

And Shaw and Anderson, along with F.R. Scott, Bruce Ruddick, and Margaret Day did just that. Preview was published from March 1942 to early 1945 (the final issue, number twenty-three, was not dated). Patrick Anderson described the early days of Preview to Seymour Mayne:

The first six issues which were monthly were all mimeographed in foolscap form with only a printed title which alternated between blue and red. The meetings of the group [included] . . . Mrs. Phillip Surrey who wrote as Margaret Day and who only really participated (although she was always a friend of the magazine) for about two issues; Bruce Ruddick who, as I remember was about to become a young medical student; Nenfville Shaw; Frank Scott; and myself; and after about one issue, very valuably P.K. Page. The group met very often in my apartment behind Dorchester Street (for which I paid $17 a month — three almost unheated rooms over an unheated garage), sometimes at Neufville's who was then living in Notre Dame de Grace, occasionally at Frank's. We rotated our meetings. We were supposed to have two meetings a month. The first meeting was to read new work and discuss it, and the second meeting was a practical one of getting the magazine stapled and arranged for distribution to its subscribers. It always had subscribers; it was never on sale to the general public.²

     The magazine did not have a large readership and the average issue consisted of about 125 copies ("Four of the Former Preview Editors; A Discussion," 96).

     Without a doubt Patrick Anderson was the leader of the group. Louis Dudek in assessing his role says that "the characteristic impulse and direction was given to that magazine by Patrick Anderson, an Englishman who had come to Montreal via New York and Columbia University, from Oxford, bringing with him a mellifluous and hypereloquent manner of speech (that overwhelmed our literati) and a fertility of imagination that soon became the model of emulation for the poets writing in Preview."³ The strength of his impact can be gauged by Bruce Ruddick's recollection of him as "the conscience of our poetry, and the conscience of our working at poetry" ("Four of the Former Preview Editors: A Discussion," 100). Anderson modestly claimed that he was one of the group and that F.R. Scott was the senior member: "I think his relationship with the group was slightly avuncular. On the whole I think we — that's to say P.K., Neufville, Bruce and I — were supposed to initiate, and Frank was generally there to approve, or disapprove" (Mayne interview, 54). A look at the pages of Preview, however, shows that Anderson contributed considerably more material than any of the other members. In all, he published forty poems, nine short stories, and five reviews and articles in Preview. P.K. Page appeared thirty-four times with eight stories, twenty-four poems, and two essays. Scott and Shaw published eighteen items each while Ruddick wrote seventeen. Fifteen other writers were also included, among them A.M. Klein, Raymond Souster, Miriam Waddington, and A.G. Bailey.

     The first number of Preview begins with an unsigned "Statement" which sets forth the guiding principles of the group. First of all, it makes the point that Preview was not aimed at the general public but that it "represents five Montreal writers who recently formed themselves into a group for the purpose of mutual discussion and criticism and who hope, through these selections, to try out their work before a somewhat larger public." This same point is made again in number six where Preview is referred to as a "work in progress within the group." The initial editorial outlines three other goals which the group shared: to overcome Montreal's cultural isolation, to unite lyricism with didacticism, and to make contact with other writers in Canada and abroad.

     The first aim grew out of their political beliefs. They were left-wing intellectuals who felt that Montreal was cut off from the influence of Socialism, which they considered the wave of the future, and that their role was to end this isolation. To this end, Preview verse eschewed traditional Canadian subjects, especially nature. Preview poems concentrate upon urban scenes, working class characters, and the Second World War as a symptom of capitalism's self-destruction. Since they were leftists (though, according to Anderson, not all Marxists) describing a capitalist society it is not surprising to find that society presented in a gloomy light. "Plaque" by Bruce Ruddick is typical of this pessimism:

Under the viaduct, by the hot canal
White horse and cop clomped overhead and the barges
Were lifted in Lock 6, he was conceived
Oh no more wondrously than any bulb or grub.
Fed while the 8:04 speckled the breast,
And commuters' shadows streaked across the oilcloth
He flourished like corn or crow.
Where cats scamper and horse cavorts
He learned to stand and spit at the passing cars —
Triumph of the cortex over the natural response.
Spent four years learning to hate.
At ten was adopted by a fine big firm.
At fifteen was a pin-boy at Mike's.
At twenty fronted for a bookie's.
Was drafted and prepared to make the world safe
For Belmont and Narraganset and the boys at Mike's
Staggered and hit the curb.
Was sent back via Postal Telegraph.
The lady who answered couldn't read
And the dark words finally
Sputtered under a frying pan.
Oh lament your strong and white winged heroes.
The passing freight flutters the laundry hanging out
like clichés.⁴

The young man drifts aimlessly in a society which offers him nothing but which will send him to his death so that it can maintain its blighted existence.

     The group's second goal was to effect a "fusion between the lyric and the didactic elements in modern verse, a combination of vivid, arresting imagery and the capacity to 'sing' with social content and criticism." The method was easy to describe but difficult to master. The end result is often too propagandistic or, more usually, it is a series of intricate and breathtaking images with little intelligent content. The following stanza from P.K. Page's "Bed-Sitting Room" is a good example:

The sun has beaten its palms flat against glass
and getting no answer, strides like a long-legged ghost
over the window-sill and camps on the rug;
releases canaries which perch on the chair and table
and sing like a needle.⁵

There are too many similes and metaphors in the stanza. Everything is pictured in terms of something else. Page shows off her skills as an image maker but she says nothing which could not be communicated more effectively in a less clotted manner.

    The Preview group made limited contact with writers outside of Canada. Poetry and Horizon had kind words for the magazine and James Laughlin of New Directions asked for permission to print something by Patrick Anderson.⁶   Their most significant contact was with First Statement, another Montreal little magazine, and its editor John Sutherland. The dispute between these two publications is briefly dicussed below.

     Although Preview is most important for what it contributed to Canadian poetry, it also printed short stories. The stories resemble the poetry in that they usually depict working class characters and hold a pessimistic view of life. They most readily expose an attitude of self-conscious superiority which mars a good deal of Preview writing. For example, "Vi"⁷ by Bruce Ruddick is narrated by a student who is working for the summer as the driver of a tour bus. Although he claims to be a socialist and a friend of the people, the youth adopts the pose of a Moses with the tablets. He asks "how the hell are you going to talk socialism to them when they are led to figure socialism will take away what little they have?" and adds that "after awhile I gave up trying to educate them." There is no suggestion of irony in the story. The narrator and the author both give the impression of being snobs.

     The stories of Patrick Anderson belong in a category of their own. Most concentrate upon the creation of a persona, a narrator who is intensely alive to even the most delicate physical sensations. In fact, the narrator is more important to the stories than any action which takes place in them. This trait emerges most clearly in Anderson's 'journal' stories such as "Notes From My Journal: Baie St. Paul," "Further Notes From Baie St. Paul," and "A Note From My Journal,"⁸ where he tries to create the image of a sensitive artist through the journals that he keeps.

     Preview was not a critically oriented publication but it did carry a few articles which commented on contemporary Canadian writing. In "Canadian Poetry 1942"⁹ P.K. Page notes the improved climate for poetry in Canada by comparing the current situation with that in 1939. Then, she says,

Anne Marriot wrote The Wind Our Enemy — a long poem of drought on the prairies — in which she dared to use a modern technique, and, more terrible still, to display a consciousness of Canada's social problems. But the annual poetry award that year went to Mr. Arthur Bourinot, who wrote, if I remember rightly, of the first trillium and shadows on the hills. And what hard-bitten judge of Canadian poetry is not won over and softened by the first trillium? I ask you.

    Now, however, "within the length of a year three new Canadian magazines appeared — magazines which were not only willing to print 'modern' verse, but actually wanted it." The three magazines were, of course, Preview, Contemporary Verse, and First Statement. With these three magazines in operation "the poet is no longer silent." She concludes that "he has yet to come to grips with himself and stop crying 'Help' from the prairies and woods and mountains. If instead he will forget awhile the country of his head, he may find his age and consequently his belief." In effect Page was calling for a break with the Romantic-pastoral tradition in Canadian verse and for an urban poetry with a more universal and less localized setting which was more in line with recent British and American poetry.

    The attack upon the Romantic tradition in Canadian poetry was maintained by F.R. Scott in "A Note on Canadian War Poetry."¹⁰  He complains that the majority of Canadian war poems are jingoistic and hollowly romantic. He attributes this fact to what he believes to be the over-riding colonialism of the Canadian consciousness. He argues that even though nineteenthcentury British poetic techniques were outmoded they were still preserved by Canadian writers who were ensnared by the colonial attitude, and calls upon modern writers to become "sensitive to the growing forces of their age" and to give voice to these forces in a poetry which would "become a potent instrument of social change."

     In his review of A.J.M. Smith's anthology The Book of Canadian Poetry, entitled "The Maple is Dying"11 Neufville Shaw attacks the idea of a national verse and also disparages the poets of the past and praises the moderns. Not surprisingly, he hails the Preview poets who are included in Smith's book as leaders who would free Canadian literature from the romantic viewpoint and from the isolating tendencies of nationalism and bring it into the fold of international art. He writes:

It is the verse of Scott, Anderson, Page and Wreford which makes us quite contentedly proclaim the death of the Maple Leaf for here we find a complete disregard for a dictated chauvinism and a didacticism which, while not constituting political directive, is a ruthless analysis of social falsehood. It is on this tide of affirmation that the future of Canadian verse rests for it is by a union with the great wave of social protest which is, at present, sweeping the country that a universalized statement can be made which carries within its scope all the proud and sweeping ramifications of mankind itself.

     One of the more colourful events in Preview's brief existence was the group's feud with John Sutherland and the First Statement group. Ironically, Patrick Anderson contributed to Sutherland's starting of First Statement. According to Anderson

John Sutherland, who used to take pot-luck luncheons with me, proposed himself for membership of Preview, supporting his claim with a prose poem about a bee which got grassblades stuck up its nose. Perhaps jealous of my new-found security in the group, I advised against Sutherland's immediate admission. Sutherland soon started First Statement.¹²

     Of course there were important ideological differences between the Preview and the First Statement groups. The Preview writers were cosmopolitans; the First Statement people tended towards nationalism, or, when they came under foreign influence, took American and not British writers as their models. Also, the members of the Preview group tended to be intellectuals and aesthetes, whereas the First Statement group tended to be 'realists'. Wynne Francis observes:

Preview poets excelled in tightly-structured metaphysical exercises, in sophisticated, witty satiric pieces of social comment in highly metaphorical poems rich in Marxist and Freudian allusions. The cold, intricate brilliance of their intellectual gymnastics and verbal legerdemain dazzled, awed and exasperated First Statement people. In their eyes, it was 'precious', artificial. Moreover it was imported; it was English. Which is not to say that Preview poets did not write of Canadian images. On the contrary some of their most successful works do just this. But the manner was English and their masters were modern British poets.¹³

    This habit of writing in the manner of the modern English poets was subsequently labelled "literary colonialism" by Sutherland.

     Anderson later recalled that Preview "probably respected John Sutherland but had the feeling that he was surrounded . . . not by exciting bohemians but by callow, semi-literate youths whose voices had only recently broken" (Anderson, 14). Despite its aloofness, Preview did manage to take a few swipes at Sutherland and First Statement. In "Canadian Poetry 1942" P.K. Page speaks of it in a patronizing tone as a magazine published by "young people" which has a "wide-eyed uncertain policy of inclusion." Patrick Anderson attacks First Statement's lack of political commitment in "Ourselves"¹⁴ where he speaks of the writer's role in shaping the future of the world. "What is the writer going to do?" he asks, "Is he, like the First Statement Group, going to content himself with study circles to ponder the platitudes of Lampman and Carman? Or is he going to plunge boldly into the progressive movement, learning from association with it the inspiration of solidarity, while he contributes to it the values of his culture, imaginative understanding and sensitivity?" In his 1973 interview with Seymour Mayne, Anderson remembered that "we were . . . very, very serious politically . . . [we thought] they weren't serious enough" (58).

     First Statement was far more vigorous in its attacks. In "P.K. Page and Preview"¹⁵ Sutherland says that Preview writers had two aims: "to deal with subjects of importance" and "to preserve a lyrical beauty." He amplifies the second point by saying that "when they talk of lyrical beauty they generally mean a beauty that has an element of strangeness about it." According to Sutherland, P.K. Page applied these two aims in a very specific way: "making a special practical report on the lives of stenographers." He criticizes her, and by implication the Preview style, because she is too subjective and because "the phrasing is too overwhelming to be entirely true." In other words the highly metaphorical style introduced to the group by Anderson took poetry away from reality and not nearer to it.

     In "Geography, Politics, and Poetry"¹⁶ Louis Dudek expands upon Sutherland's objections. He writes that there were three disturbing tendencies in modern poetry:

(1) a clever aptitude for exploiting the unreal universe of language; (2) a pedantic absorption in the second-hand universe of books, literature and erudition; and (3) a falsified devotion to a special universe of ideas, chiefly sociological and political ideas. These tendencies are so wide-spread today that everyone will readily see their applications . . . . In short, what is wrong with today's social preaching in poetry is that it is likely to be falsified preaching. It is likely to show the influence of 'upper class', high-cultured, intellectual spirit. Its writers may not be aristocrats, but they have learned the separateness, subtlety, and love-of-culture of the aristocracy. They are simply not plebian enough. We have in Montreal a magazine, Preview, in which much of the work illustrates this point.

    Dudek is deadly accurate. Take away the pejorative terms such as "falsified" and "unreal" and one has a perfect description of the Preview style.

    With Sutherland's article on Patrick Anderson ¹⁷ the dispute took an unfortunate turn and came very near libel. Sutherland claimed that he could find evidence in Anderson's writing that as a boy he had had "some sexual experience of a kind not normal." This assertion brought a libel suit from the Preview leader and a grudging retraction from Sutherland in the next issue of First Statement. Despite the unpleasantness of Sutherland's personal attack upon Anderson, the rivalry between the two groups was a good thing. It provided a healthy stimulus to writing and critical thought not merely in Montreal but in the country as a whole. As George Woodcock has recently said, "English-Canadian poetry, as we know it today, sprang up in Montreal."¹⁸

    Preview began as a challenge and was kept alive by the enthusiasm of a group of dedicated writers. Such enthusiasm could not last forever. Neufville Shaw recalls that "we all just ran out. We wrote ourselves out and got tired. We were like toy machines, and someone wound us up . . . . Maybe it was our age . . . . And then we just ran down" ("Four of the Former Preview Editors: A Discussion," 117).

     The poems and stories listed in the following index are among the finest written in Canada in the 'forties and attest to the important service that Preview performed for Canadian literature.

Notes

1. "Four of the Former Preview Editors: A Discussion," Canadian Poetry, 4 (Spring/ Summer,1979), 93-94.[back]
   
   
2. Seymour Mayne, "A Conversation With Patrick Anderson," Inscape,11 (1974), 53.[back]
   
   
3. Louis Dudek, "The Role of Little Magazines in Canada," The Canadian Forum, 38 (1958), 77.[back]
   
   
4. Bruce Ruddick, "Plaque," Preview, 4 (June 1942), n.p.[back]
   
   
5. P.K. Page, "Bed-Sitting Room," Preview, 3 (May 1942), n.p.[back]
   
   
6. Anonymous, "Note," Preview, 4 (June 1942), n.p.[back]
   
   
7. Bruce Ruddick, "Vi," Preview, 3 (May 1942), n.p.[back]
   
   
8. Patrick Anderson, "Notes From My Journal: Baie St. Paul," Preview, 10 (January 1943), 9-11; "Further Notes From Baie St. Paul," Preview, 14 (July 1943), 6-9; and "A Note From My Journal," Preview,17 (December 1943), 7-9.[back]
   
   
9. P.K. Page, "Canadian Poetry 1942," Preview, 8 (October 1942),8-9.[back]
   
   
10. F.R. Scott, "A Note on Canadian War Poetry," Preview, 9 (November 1942), 3-5.[back]
    
    
11. Neufville Shaw, "The Maple Leaf is Dying," Preview, 17 (December 1943), 1-3.[back]
    
    
12. Patrick Anderson, "A Poet Past and Future," Canadian Literature, 56 (Spring, 1973), 13-14.[back]
    
    
13. Wynne Francis, "Montreal Poets of the Forties," in A Choice of Critics, ed. George Woodcock (Toronto: Oxford University Press,1966), p. 43.[back]
    
    
14. Patrick Anderson, "Ourselves," Preview, ll (February l943) n.p.[back]
    
    
15. John Sutherland, "P.K. Page and Preview," First Statement, I:6:7-8.[back]
    
    
16. Louis Dudek, "Geography, Politics, and Poetry," First Statement, I:15:2-3.[back]
    
    
17. John Sutherland, "The Writing of Patrick Anderson," First Statement, I:19:3-6.[back]
    
    
18. George Woodcock, Speaking on "Sunday Morning," CBC Radio, Sunday, May 18, 1980.[back]
    

INDEX

This index is arranged in one alphabet and includes author and title entries. Each entry includes the number of the issue, its date, and the page or pages on which the item is found. Numbers one through six inclusive and number eleven were not paginated. Number twenty-three bears no date. These facts are recorded on the individual entries.

BAILEY, Alfred G.
"Graph," poem. No. 6 (August 1942), n.p.
"Plague Burial," poem. No. 15 (August 1943), 5.
"Ballad of Railway Stations," poem. Patrick Anderson, No. 19 (March 1944), 5-6.
"The Bands and the Beautiful Children," poem. P.K. Page, No. 19 (March 1944), 8.
"Bank Strike," poem. P.K. Page, No. 9 (November 1942), 8.
"The Barons," poem. F.R. Scott, No. 13 (May 1943), 6-8.
"Bedside," poem. F.R. Scott, No. 21 (December 1944), 6.
"Bed-Sitting Room," poem. P.K. Page, No. 3 (May 1942), n.p.
"The Bell Sound and the Copper Tone," poem. Alice Eedy, No. 14 (July 1943), 3.
"Bombing Berlin," poem. Patrick Anderson, No. 18 (January 1944), 9-10.
"Boy — 1942," poem. Neufville Shaw, No. 9 (November 1942), 7.
"The Boys," poem. Patrick Anderson, No. 6 (August 1942), n.p.
"Bread," poem. A.M. Klein, No. 19 (March 1944), 1.
"Brother — You of the City," poem. Bruce Ruddick, No. 1 (March 1942), n.p.
"Burn," story. Bruce Ruddick, No. 18 (January 1944), 1-5.
"Canadian Poetry, 1942," essay. P.K. Page, No. 8 (October 1942), 8-9.
"Candida," poem. Patrick Anderson, No. 12 (March 1943), 4-5.
"Capital Square," poem. Patrick Anderson, No. 1 (March 1942), n.p.
"The Chief Mourner," poem. P.K. Page, No. 14 (July 1943), 6.
"Children," poem. P.K. Page, No. 21 (September 1944), 10.
"Children," poem. Patrick Anderson, No. 23 (n.d.), 5.
"Cold," poem. Alice Eedy, No. 17 (December 1943), 4.
"Commercial Bank," poem. A.M. Klein, No. 19 (March 1944), 1.
"Comrade, Look Not to the Hill," poem. James Wreford, No. 20 (May 1944), 4.
"The Conqueror," poem. Bruce Ruddick, No. 12 (March 1943), 3-4.
"The Crystal," poem. Miriam Waddington, No. 15 (August 1943), 4.
"Dancer," poem. Patrick Anderson, No. 18 (January 1944), 8-9.
"Danny — Nova Scotia," story. Patrick Anderson, No. 16 (October 1943), 1-7.

RUDDICK, Bruce
"Brother — You of the City," poem. No. 1 (March 1942), n.p.
"Poem," poem. No. 2 (April 1942), n.p.
"With His Scimitar Logic," poem. No. 3 (May 1942), n.p.
"Vi," story. No. 3 (May 1942), n.p.
"Plaque," poem. No. 4 (June 1942), n.p.
"Agony Column," poem. No. 5 (July 1942), n.p.
"August 1942," poem. No. 6 (August 1942), n.p.
"#25," poem. No. 7 (September 1942), 4.
"Scenario," poem. No. 9 (November 1942), 9.
"Rehabilitation," poem. No. 10 (January 1943), 7.
"The Conqueror," poem. No. 12 (March 1943), 3-4.
"Freighter," poem. No. 14 (July 1943), 5.
"Fever," poem. No. 16 (October 1943), 10.
"Burn," story. No. 18 (January 1944), 1-5.
"Fear," poem. No. 19 (March 1944), 6-7.
"Old Minka's Weather," story. No. 20 (May 1944), 1-3.
"The Demagogue," poem. No. 21 (September 1944), 9-10.
"Saturday Sundae," poem. F.R. Scott, No. 19 (March 1944), 7-8.
"Scenario," poem. Bruce Ruddick, No. 9 (November 1942), 9.

SHAW, Neufville
"At the Plant," story. No. 1 (March 1942), n.p.
"Poem," poem. No. 1 (March 1942), n.p.
"Drowned Sailor," poem. No. 2 (April 1942), n.p.
"Harbour," poem. No. 3 (May 1942), n.p.
"At Cities That Know Our Plans," poem. No. 4 (June 1942) n.p.
"Home Front," story. No. 5 (July 1942), n.p.
"For A.H.," poem. No. 5 (July 1942), n.p.
"Novella," poem. No. 6 (August 1942), n.p.
"Obituary Without End," poem. No. 6 (August 1942), n.p.
"Poem," poem. No. 7 (September 1942), 5.
"Platitudes of Necessity," poem. No. 8 (October 1942), 6.
"Wasteland," essay. No. 8 (October 1942), 9-10.
"Boy — 1942," poem. No. 9 (November 1942), 7.
"Electrical Plant," essay. No. 11 (February 1943), n.p.
"Factory Fosters," poem. No. 11 (February 1943), n.p.
"Incident with a Factual Basis," story. No. 12 (March 1943), 1-3.
"Old Elizabeth and New George," essay. No. 13 (May 1943), 9-13.
"The Maple Leaf is Dying," essay. No. 17 (December 1943), 1-3.
"Shipbuilding Office," poem. P.K. Page, No. 13 (August 1943), 4.
"Ski Train," poem. Patrick Anderson, No. 12 (March 1943), 9-10.

WREFORD, James [Pseudonym for James Wreford Watson]
"The Mental Butterfly," poem. No. 20 (May 1944), 4.
"Identity," poem. No. 20 (May 1944), 5-6.
"Comrade, Look Not to the Hill," poem. No. 20 (May 1944), 6.
"Aerial Survey," poem. No. 23 (n.d.), 4.
"Writer," poem. Patrick Anderson, No. 7 (September 1942), 6.
"3," poem. Patrick Anderson, No. 20 (May 1944), 8.
"#25," poem. Bruce Ruddick, No. 7 (September 1942), 4.