In a Canvas Tent

Bob Lincoln is Director of Acquisitions at the University of Manitoba
Libraries.

In spite of the rugged outdoor life that surrounds these poems, the poetry itself is relatively passive. From time to time a line or stanza achieves brilliance and beauty, but as a whole the book is unresolved. This is due partly to MacLean’s approach to nature: he is a transcendentalist. Like Snyder, he is familiar with lumber camps and cold tents, but his philosophy is Buddhist. He reaches towards the perfect void and reflects upon the unity of all things. This transcription, these poems are filled with contradictions of language and subject. We are told that the true experience of nature is beyond words and can only be sensed rather than described. But good poems must demonstrate this rather than just reporting it. Inappropriate diction or the choice of improper words interrupts the flow of language. The lines ring out oddly and surprise by their awkwardness.

MacLean is engaged in an abstract quest for truth, and yet the stronger poems are about his grandmother, or his own emotions — such as the line from the Nass River section that begins “Tent tethered among jackpine and blue — ”. Another fine line that shows MacLean’s facility with language is from the Haines Creek section, where he observes the “sheer blind resinous weight of these days…” The contrasts between the forests and rock of B.C. and the almost invisible landscape of the poet are only partly explored. The gap between the untranslatable, transcendent experience of nature and that of the poet’s vision remains. It is a lyrical canvas without framing. The focus and tension are loose; we are poised to move but do not leave the earth.