How We All Swiftly: The First Six Books

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta. He is
the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

Don Coles has won the Governor General’s Award for poetry and has been
a well-known writer since the publication of his first book, Sometimes
All Over (included in this book) in 1975. How We All Swiftly is a
well-designed volume, which includes an introduction by the major
critic, W.J. Keith. Not all readers will concur with Keith’s high
opinion of the writer (“one of the most accomplished poets of our
time”). Generally, these are low-key academic poems with no emotional
pressure and no sense of resistance in the medium. The poems inspired by
Kafka (from his book K in Love) are better than most of the others.
Responding to Kafka’s correspondence and journals gave Coles a
standard to reach for. Unfortunately, his own attempts to be personal in
the long sequence “Little Bird” were not very interesting.