The Beauty of the Weapons: Selected Poems 1972-82

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.

Robert Bringhurst has been publishing poetry for a decade, but until this volume appeared there must have been many like myself who had not yet encountered him. In offering us his “Selected Poems,” McClelland and Stewart are thus in the rare position of virtually introducing a poet of remarkable skill and maturity.

Bringhurst is, somewhat unfashionably but in my view refreshingly, a descendant of the Moderns. His raids on the wisdom and mythology of other ages and cultures recall Pound’s, and he admits in the notes to one poem (he offers us much-needed, very sensible, never pretentious notes) a “theft” from Wallace Stevens. Above all, his imagery and tone continually suggest Eliot:

... muttering to the blessed virgin through my hemorrhoids and bad teeth. I should be glad to be rid of this sagging carcass.

But in saying this I am not accusing him of being weakly derivative. On the contrary, he knows that a living culture needs to be strengthened regularly by injections from the culture of the past. He has learned from Pound that one can only “make new” by returning to what has already been made. And he also knows that, for a serious poet, there is no substitute for learning, application, and finely honed speech.

His poems may be divided conveniently into three groups. The most available consists of some effective dramatic monologues, notably those in which the speakers are Moses, Jacob, and Petrarch. Then there are a number of erudite, difficult poems in which preSocratic philosophers, Egyptian pharaohs and officials, and primitive South American gods are revived and interpreted. Bringhurst makes a bold attempt to assimilate these to our experience, though they often remain, for me at least, elusive, enigmatic in a vaguely irritating sense. Finally, there are series of somewhat obscure but decidedly haunting poems in which, rather in the manner of Eliot’s “Marina,” the beauty of individual images, subtle rhythms, and a fine sense of atmosphere takes precedence over simple (i.e., prosaic) meaning. Above all, his chaste precision of diction and his control of verse that is irregular without ever becoming free are admirable. Here is a new Canadian poet who, far from being a novice, is both sophisticated and accomplished.