The Peaceable Kingdom

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.

George Whipple has done it again. I have been recommending his books of
poetry in these pages for years now, and The Peaceable Kingdom earns the
same appreciative response.

Typical of him are the two poems about Canada here, “The Peaceable
Kingdom” itself and “Canada 2000,” the first celebratory
(pioneering and all that), the second ironic and deprecating (“Land of
the always future, / of a divided people / ... / in love with
elsewhere.”) One would have thought the subject (and both reactions)
had been written dry long ago, yet Whipple succeeds in reproducing
apparent clichés and (in part thanks to a canny juxtaposition of moods)
making them new.

Whipple’s quality may be gauged from the first stanza of “Garden
Whispers”: “In gardens / I palaver with the willow, / speak the
language of the laurel, / bend an attentive ear / to the yellow badinage
/ of buttercups, the shy / blue stutter of the aster.” The verbal
freshness here—“palaver,” “badinage,” “blue stutter,” and
indeed the wonderful control of sounds throughout—is masterly.

His largeness of view is well illustrated by two poems on contemporary
“culture,” “Prime Time” (on commercial TV) and “Now Playing”
(on popular cinema). These aspects of modern life that most thoughtful
people would find bitterly depressing are here firmly “placed,” yet
Whipple’s tone is one of sad amusement. He is troubled, perhaps
disgusted, even appalled, yet he is maturely resigned and doesn’t lose
his temper.

He is, then, a religious writer open to, and whenever possible
celebrating, the things of this world. His poems often contain a
didactic element, and, given their simple directness, ought to be banal,
but somehow never are. There is a Blake-like quality about his way of
looking. “I hold the shining world / in the playroom of my mind,” he
tells us, and if we allow it we can come to share at least some of his
vision. Whipple, we might say, is a poet for all seasons.