The Bees of the Invisible: Essays in Contemporary English Canadian Writing

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia in Prince
George.

These nine “Essays in Contemporary English Canadian Writing” deal
with seven living Canadian writers (l tend to see them as poets who also
write other things): Leonard Cohen, James Reaney, Al Purdy, Dennis Lee,
George Bowering, Christopher Dewdney, and Daphne Marlatt. Dragland is a
self-confessed postmodernist critic, but he does not write like one. His
prose is not overburdened with jargon, and he does not have an
irresistible urge to list seven or eight French critics to support every
point he makes.

It took me some time and effort to get into the essays, and at first I
found myself fighting impatience. Dragland writes criticism the way
Marlatt writes poetry: proprioceptively, getting inside the object of
contemplation until it is not an object at all but an experience. His
development of an argument may seem fragmented and may appear to take
weird jumps in logic, but stick with him. He knows where he is going and
he is saying important things. My favorite essay is “‘Creatures of
Ecstasy’: Touch to my Tongue,” in which Dragland reveals the nuances
of Marlatt’s work by deconstructing one of his old reviews of the
book.

Read these essays as analyses of contemporary Canadian writing and as
models of how to transform reading into writing.