Radio Silence

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of English at the University of Prince
Edward Island.

This scholarly collection (some of these poems have previously been
published elsewhere), edited by Marty Gervais, is a companion piece to
Meyer’s earlier book The Open Room. In Radio Silence, he sensitively
explores those often mysterious, tangential relationships between time
present, time future, and time past, in a context of (quasi-radio)
silences “full of voices” in his life. His so-called objective
correlatives—those objects, situations, events he selects to
crystallize thought and feeling—are wide-ranging. But one recurring
image is the blackbird. An attractive chromolithograph cover design of
blackbird and missel thrush encapsulates this. Meyer looks back on an
emerging Canadian identity: its future is of speculative concern to him.
His poignant poem “The South Saskatchewan” is worthy of a place in
any future Canadian school anthology.