Collected Poems, Volume 2

D.F. Crawley was Professor Emeritus of English at Queen's University in Kingston.

It is usual to associate a poet of note with a variety of subjects and techniques, with electrifying juxtapositions, with a use of language that makes us feel as well as think, and with an approach that deals with universal concerns in a gripping way. On all these counts the Collected Poems of Ralph Gustafson qualify. Although he has been criticized for being out of the main Canadian tradition, more European than Canadian, and too heavily learned and academic, the inclusion of Gustafson’s poems on Canadian Literature courses is now quite common.

The variety of his subject matter can be gauged from the titles of his poems: “In Sight of Etna,” “Red Square,” “Twelfth-century Music,” “Quebec Suganbush,” “The Blizzards,” “The Valley of Kings,” “The Horses of St. Marks,” “Love Poem,” “Franz Liszt: Tivoli,” “Faith is a Concrete Object.” In spite of his very wide-ranging interests, there are some subjects and themes that rivet Gustafson’s attention again and again; for instance, his world travelling has resulted in poems inspired by Italy, Greece, Egypt, the United States, the Yukon, Turkey, Germany, Australia. Of course Quebec, where he was born, comes in for special attention. Another subject he returns to in countless poems is the classics — the literature, myths, heroes, and authors of Greece and Rome. The classics often provide Gustafson with a powerful aura of allusion.

As might be expected there is an interesting variety also in imagery, rhythm, and length of lines, verses, and poems. Gustafson is often successful in his unifying of poems by threading variations upon an image. An instance of this can be seen in “Ricercare: And Still These Deaths Are Ours,” where there are often disturbing images of eyes:

Few, for the matter of that,
Have brushed flies from the living eyes
Of dying children.

And, when he wants to be succinct, he can produce a four-lined poem like “Mausoleum Hunting: Ravenna”:

Theodoric the Emperor,
One night, the lid off
Was dispersed by
A little wind.

At times, Gustafson does not seem to realize that too long a line breaks into two parts. An instance of this is the following line in “The Mori: Venezia”: “The Wicked Uncle in the dark woods, poking the leaves.”

There is a rich feast for any lover of poetry in Collected Poems, and those critics who have said that Canada receives short change in Gustafson’s poetry will no longer think so when they look over these two volumes.