Canadian Writers and Their Works: Poetry Series, Vol. 11

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.

The valuable Canadian Writers and Their Works was originally planned in
20 volumes, 10 devoted to poetry and 10 to fiction. However, by the time
the last volumes had been published, a new generation of writers had
emerged, so it was decided to extend the series with two further volumes
for each genre.

The present book is devoted to women poets: Roo Borson, Lorna Crozier,
Mary di Michele, Erin Mouré, and Sharon Thesen. The choices (apart from
the disturbing absence of Bronwen Wallace) are forecastable enough,
since these are prominent voices in the contemporary world of Canadian
poetry. Because they are all very much in mid-career, any assessment is
necessarily tentative; by the same token, however, they have not yet
attracted much scholarly attention. As a result, the information to be
derived from this book (especially details of biography and
bibliography) is welcome.

I wish I could say the same about the standard of literary discussion.
The truth is, however, that a change has come over the series—and
it’s not, in my view, a change for the better. Originally, the essays
were intended for students, including undergraduates beginning a serious
study of Canadian literature. But that was before the plague of theory
struck the discipline. Only Graham Barron, on Borson, leads the
beginning reader helpfully through the poems. The rest are content to
identify a poet’s position or intention—political protest, feminist
deconstruction, or whatever—without discussing whether they have
successfully embodied their aims in verse. The what is emphasized at the
expense of the how.

The results are sometimes lamentable. One critic even attributes a
well-known line of D.H. Lawrence to (of all people) T.S. Eliot! Another
misspells the Lady of Shalott. And Thesen suffers under a critical prose
so heavy as to be virtually impenetrable. Even the late George Woodcock,
in a characteristically lucid and sensible introduction, calls it
“rather prolix” (an understatement).

Students will derive useful hints from this book, but they should avoid
at all costs modeling their prose on most of the critical commentary
provided here.