Poems About Me

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.

This book is extraordinary by virtue of the fact that the poems it
contains were written when the author was in his 86th year. Everson has
had an unusual literary life; though beginning to write verse in his
twenties, he didn’t produce a volume until he was in his mid-fifties,
but has been publishing with remarkable regularity ever since.

When I was called on to review Poems About Me, I realized that, though
I had come by Everson’s poetry in the past, nothing had stuck in my
memory. Despite the publisher’s insistent blurb (“he’s never
written better”), I have the same reaction on finishing this latest
collection. The poems are pleasant, conversational, casual,
impressionistic, rather prosaic—and ultimately, I fear, unimportant. A
reader who admires the work of Raymond Souster (and this volume comes,
significantly, from Souster’s publisher) may well find them congenial.
They give a similar impression of effortlessness. At the same time,
unlike the best of Souster’s, they slip from the mind as easily as
they entered it. No individual lines can be considered memorable, and
there is none of that relish in the glory of words that some of us are
still old-fashioned enough to associate with poetry.

To be blunt, these are the writings of a poet who doesn’t try hard
enough. It is commendable verse for anyone to have written, but, apart
from its interest as an example of creative activity achieved at an
older age, I confess I can find no literary reason for publishing it.