The Moosehead Anthology

Boyd Holmes is an editor with Dundurn Press.

The back cover of this annual anthology of poetry, plays, and short
fiction reads as follows: “The Moosehead Anthology, formerly the
Moosehead Review, has been publishing the best in contemporary writing,
from the world over, since 1977. During that 14 years we have featured,
among others, John Berger, Julio Cortбzar, Leonard Cohen, Elizabeth
Spencer, Babette Deutsch, Ralph Gustafson, A.R. Ammons, Joseph [sic]
Skvorecky, Leon Rooke, W.D. Valgardson, Lorna Crozier, Njabuolo S.
Ndebele, Anne Diamond, Nino Ricci, Julian Tuwim, D.G. Jones, Richard
Kostelanetz, and Patrick Lane.”

Unfortunately, none of those authors appear in this (12th) edition.
Instead, most of this year’s contributors, with the exception of Mary
di Michele, Stephen Heighton, and Audrey Thomas, are deserved
nonentities who have produced such writing as “Soon they’ll park
near the lake’s edge, / the girl lost in the blue plush upholstery /
as the boy’s breathing / makes a slide-trombone out of her ear”; and
“Anne Cameron’s treatment of slavery in America is interesting,
apart from its pain, loss, and bloodily enforced master-race authority,
because of money its economics.” Quality of the content is not the
only problem: the typeface is an eyesore, and the cover design is bland
and ugly. The Moosehead Anthology even contains an (incomplete) errata
slip pasted to the back page. This book was stillborn.