Great Men

Ian C. Nelson is Assistant Director of Libraries at the University of
Saskatchewan.

The title of this collection also announces the last, and most lyrical
section of the book and is, in fact, the title of a poem in this final
section that first appeared in Queen’s Quarterly. Barton states that
the material was composed over 10 years and that he only latterly
“became aware of some kind of coherence hidden in the tumult.”
Indeed the collection has more coherence than a simple anthology. And
the published cover description does it rough justice: “poetry tracing
the evolution of the gay male sensibility from feelings of private fear
and social guilt to self acceptance.” Initially (in the first two
sections, which total nineteen pieces) the poet—who won the Archibald
Lampman Award for West of Darkness: A Portrait of Emily Carr—returns
worrisomely to a blatant question of whether he can love at all when the
object is of unexpected gender. Can there be love only for women or for
both men and women? In braving the responsibility of posing such
questions, the author takes rather more literary than social risks,
passing very close to straight prose. Although at its best this style
yields poems resembling the meditations of Malcolm Boyd (Are You Running
With Me, Jesus?), it is fortunately a style Barton leaves gradually
behind. The poetry is in no way outrageous (despite one or two specific
gay images), nor does it ghettoize itself in gay sensibility: “if only
the fists of the hungry / poised like questions at our door / were not
mute / fragments of last night’s dream.” This is a collection of
poetry that is very accessible and, finally, responsible: “I will
raise my glass, / drink to the hope that little / in my past can ever do
us harm.”