The Poetry of Lucy Maude Montgomery

Betsy Struthers is a poet and novelist and the author of Found: A Body.

This is the first complete collection of verse by the author of the Anne of Green Gables books. Chiefly written between 1893 and 1916, these poems reflect the Late Romantic tradition: inspiring rhymes on the beauty of nature in all its seasons and guises; hymns to God; lyrics of love and loss; and narrative verses about people, places, and historical events. Most were written for popular magazines and newspapers; they are so strictly structured that at times the lines are twisted beyond meaning to preserve the dictated rhyme. The poems strike the modern reader as sentimental, verging at times on the bathetic. The insistence on metre and rhyme dulls the appreciation of Montgomery’s insights and the predictability of her images often reduces them to trite cliche: “A pale enchanted moon is sinking low / Behind the dunes that fringe the shadowy lea / And there is haunted starlight on the flow / of immemorial sea” (from ‘Night”).

As a footnote to the literary history of this country, Montgomery’s poetry holds some interest for academics and perhaps for fans of the Anne books, although most readers accustomed to the fresh breath of modernism will find their attention to these curios quickly fades. The introduction by Kevin McCabe is essential reading, both for the biographical detail he provides and the literary context in which he places and discusses the poems. It is a concise, well-written, and thought-provoking essay on the role of popular romantic poetry in this country.