Canadian Writers and Their Works: Poetry Series, Vol. 4

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

This volume in the Canadian Writers and Their Works series is more
cohesive than most, since (with the exception of E.J. Pratt, who has
been treated in an earlier volume) it contains studies of all the poets
who contributed to the now-historic New Provinces anthology of 1936. The
most important of these were, of course, A.J.M. Smith, F.R. Scott, and
A.M. Klein, and these are separately and solidly discussed by Michael
Darling, Sandra Djwa, and Noreen Golfman, respectively. Of the others,
Susan Gingell provides a good deal of information about the long career
of Robert Finch, though she did not convince me that his poetic
achievement is such that it merits attention in a series of this kind.
The same can be said even more confidently of Leo Kennedy’s work, and
Francis Zichy makes the point in what can only be described as a
regretful but firm and responsible hatchet-job.

As usual, George Woodcock provides a knowledgeable and sensitive
introduction—which, in this instance, has the additional merit that it
can discuss as an interconnecting group the writers that the main
contributors must approach in isolation. This is, then, a valuable
addition to the available scholarship on Canadian poetry in the 1920s
and 1930s.