Classy Cats

William Blackburn is a professor of English at the University of
Calgary.

Sneyd is no Edward Lear or even Dennis Lee—and may never be. Her verse
does not rock the reader with its technical sophistication, or dazzle
with glitz—but it is no accident that this is the fourth collection
that Lola and illustrator Doug Sneyd have collaborated on. It is
particularly appropriate, given that these are poems for young children,
that what comes through most strongly in them is their sense of empathy
with the apparently powerless. Though these poems are nominally about
cats, they are also—and more interestingly—about children (both
species which demand, and deserve, our unconditional love). So the
author loves cats because “each cat is / a complicated creature”;
because each “catastrophe”—verbal sophistication is not the
author’s long suit—deserves to be loved for itself alone; because
“humans take charge / of everything else / but never of you”;
because the author laments the fact that “I haven’t learned cat
language.” Given such empathy, which even the very young can respond
to strongly, this collection’s lack of postmodernist, self-infatuated,
onanistic virtuosity is just fine.