A Poetics of Place: The Poetry of Ralph Gustafson

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.

McCarthy believes that Ralph Gustafson is one of Canada’s few truly
original poets. He also considers that Gustafson has been unjustly
neglected because he has pursued an independent course without the
benefit of a supportive coterie, and also because his poetry doesn’t
yield up its best qualities to a predominantly thematic criticism. I am
inclined to agree with him on all these points, and welcome a full-scale
analysis of Gustafson’s work. At the same time, I must report that for
all its considerable merits—and it is certainly the most detailed and
scholarly treatment of its subject—it is a little too academic for my
taste.

McCarthy wins my approval at the outset by insisting that “poems are
not theme-machines.” But they are not thought-machines either. The
critic is thorough, and his high regard for Gustafson is evident on
every page, but, despite his claim to focus on the poet’s craft, too
often he seems to me to be fitting his poems into the overriding context
of Gustafson’s intellectual-cum-imaginative position.

What I do not find is any sustained attempt to isolate Gustafson’s
characteristic (later) style: his staccato lines, his quirky wit, the
consistently surprising juxtapositions of abstract statement and
personal, worldly anecdote. Of one poem, for example, McCarthy argues
that it “proceeds through the force of its rhythms and imagery, the
tension of its structure and music, rather than through the force of
allusion.” I agree entirely, but wish he had spent more time
discussing and demonstrating these qualities. Too often, when he turns
to “practical criticism,” we are offered rather perfunctory
observations on such standard topics as alliteration and assonance.

Still, McCarthy is learned, painstaking, thorough, and helpfully
informative. By no means a dazzling study, A Poetics of Place is
nevertheless a solid, well-researched contribution—and, in an age
beset by the intellectually shoddy, this is an occasion for praise.