The Emergence of the Muse: Major Canadian Poets from Crawford to Pratt

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.

This anthology of premodernist Canadian poetry contains selections from
Isabella Valancy Crawford, William Wilfred Campbell, Charles G.D.
Roberts, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, Duncan Campbell Scott,
Marjorie Pickthall, and E.J. Pratt. As any teacher of Canadian poetry
knows, good anthologies are few and far between, and any new prospect is
to be welcomed. This one has its pros but also its cons.

First, the pros. It is to be commended for its scholarship. Each poet
is introduced by a succinct statement giving biographical and
bibliographical information (including even the location of manuscript
sources). The poems are presented chronologically, and the dates of
first magazine and book publication are given. The selections are
generous, averaging some 40 pages of text per poet. The book is
attractively designed and printed.

The cons are twofold. First, no explanatory notes accompany the
selections. This is a not uncommon occurrence but still amazes me. Why
editors think that students (and even teachers nowadays) need no help
with obscure references I cannot understand. These include an
untranslated Greek epigraph to Carman’s “Overlord,” complex
allusions in poems like Pratt’s “From Stone to Steel,” and
no-longer-obvious historical references in the work of most of these
poets.

Second, the critical remarks are at best bland and at worst inept. The
reader of Carman, we are told, “is confronted not only with a writer
who finds ready enough inspiration, but one who knows how he wants to
and must write.” Which means precisely nothing. Again, in the preface
Pratt’s “The Titanic” is cited as an example of the “notion that
the land can defeat the strongest of physical onslaughts and negate
humankind’s ingenuity.” What “the land” means here is beyond me.
This is unfortunate, since students need to be set a good critical
example. Even the title is dubious (“emergence” is pompous, “the
Muse” an old-fashioned cliché). And gross exaggerations, like finding
kinship between Pickthall’s voice and “Keatsian lyric,” are
harmful rather that helpful.

Having said all that, however, I must end by granting that, for all its
faults, I know of no better selection of this material between two
covers.