A Painter's Poems

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.

Christopher Pratt is a major Canadian painter whose landscapes and
seascapes rank among the finest in the tradition of classicist realism.
This collection of 50 poems appeared in the year in which he celebrated
his 70th birthday. He is quoted on the jacket flap as saying that, for
him, “poetry is a personal exorcism,” adding: “I am aware that
exorcism is not always ‘art’.” Moreover, the preface refers to
“the many seasons of ‘Will I—won’t I’s’ that have preceded
the publication of these poems.” And it is not difficult to see why.

Because I am an enthusiastic admirer of his paintings, I had hoped to
welcome his poems with comparable fervour. I regret, however, that I
cannot do so. As might be expected, they are full of images drawn from
Newfoundland and the Maritimes: sailing and fishing, seabirds, and the
conspicuously changing seasons. Yet, though pleasant enough, they are
decidedly minor achievements, promising more than they actually deliver,
written in a loose free verse interspersed with sporadic rhyme or a line
or two of regular metre for which it is not easy to discover a reason.
To quote almost at random, from the last lines of one poem: “You
brought me petals every morning, / fresh, until I held them angled to
the light / where I could see that something / had passed over them at
night.” One cannot, surely, help noticing that the language and
rhythms are not compelling enough, and that one remains uncertain how to
respond to the concluding line.

However, these poems range widely in mood and tone. Some, indeed, are
poignant, especially “You Came Into My Studio,” where Pratt, clearly
speaking in his own person, laments the fading of his senses: “colours
I can’t see, / sounds too delicate to hear, things out of focus.”
Yet the poem ends in a puzzling question mark that, at least for me,
disappoints.

The book is illustrated by Pratt himself, in a collage style very
different from the paintings to which we are accustomed. Admirers of his
art will therefore need to look at them. Though not a total success, A
Painter’s Poems is a significant document by a great Canadian.