An Invisible Accordion: A Canadian Poetry Association Anthology

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia and is the
co-editor of Four Realities: Poets of Northern B.C.

The intent is admirable; the result is less so. This book is very unfair
to the poets it presents. Slightly more than 50 are represented in
approximately 90 pages of text. For most of the authors, only one short
poem has been included. The Canadian Poetry Association would have made
a far better contribution to Canadian poetry if 10 or 12 of the truly
good poets among the group had been given a showcase for a
representative cross section of their work. I suspect that because this
is “A Canadian Poetry Association Anthology” membership in the
Association was one of the main criteria for inclusion and that some of
the poets included here feel that there is nothing wrong with getting
into an anthology on the basis of their having paid a membership fee.
This book will be of interest to the poets in it and to their friends
and families, but to very few others.