The Death of Socialism and Other Poems

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

Political poetry, more than most, usually requires what T.S. Eliot once
called an “objective correlative,” a kind of stalking-horse. For
Robin Mathews it is “pax Americana,” exemplified in U.S. capitalist
proneness to “fatten from the flesh of the socialist world.”
Mathews’s preface in the book elaborates on this theme. In the
“Other Poems,” his targets widen to include the human condition more
generally. Irony merges into satire in “Marina: Saturna Island.” The
last section of the book, Cycles, wherein Mathews is increasingly
reflective, includes “Going” and “The Ones we Loved,” two poems
that are particularly tender and plangent in mood. The short lyric
“September” is worthy of a place in any anthology of Canadian nature
poetry.