Body Music

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.

Dennis Lee, whose Civil Elegies is perhaps the most impressive example
of “public” poetry in modern Canada, describes himself as a
“meditative poet,” an accurate designation despite the near-nonsense
of his children’s verse and the nondiscursive, extemporizing Riffs.
Here he meditates on the art of poetry in the modern world and on the
circumstances that make writing it so difficult.

All these essays have been published before: the earliest dates back in
its original form to 1972. But they are scattered and not easily
accessible. Moreover, all have been recently revised and often expanded.
This explains both the stylistic flow and the sense we receive of a
genuine book rather than a mere gathering. Most of the contributions
discuss poetry or poets (Al Purdy, Bronwen Wallace, Gaston Miron), but
there is also an article about the fiction writer Judy Merril and a
superb study of the philosopher George Grant. All of Lee’s subjects
are writers who, in their different ways, combine conservatism and
radicalism while probing beyond the limits—imaginative or
philosophical—of our depressing technological wasteland.

The book begins with the well-known “Cadence, Country, Silence,”
and the consideration of cadence initiated therein resonates through the
rest of the book. “A poem thinks by the way it moves.” Reading that,
one recognizes the presence of a serious poet who understands the
subtlety of his art. And in contemporary Canada, such poets are
scandalously rare.

Lee’s blending of the formal and the colloquial can be as
disconcerting in his prose as in his poetry, but one soon realizes that
his purpose is serious, and that he is searching for a precise mode of
conveying the violently shifting character of contemporary experience.
Most readers will learn from this book, even if they are bemused by
parts of it and unconvinced by others. Lee is so important precisely
because he articulates his puzzlement along with his knowledge. He
reports on his boss-shots as well as his successes. It is his
combination of intelligence and sincerity that ultimately proves so
endearing.