The Awakening: Like Spring

Marjorie Body taught in the Department of English, University of Calgary.

A book of doggerel is just that. Try as I might to find something positive to write about Awakening, I could not. The excerpt from “Darling, — Our Courtship” is typical of the entire work:

Darling, when we went together

‘Neath the sun or filthy weather

You were so God awful pert

I was so — in love it hurt

Never did I touch the ground

With my footsteps always bound

For a creature quiet and shy

When I saw you time did fly

Love you had such thrilling poise

Like a queen who gently toys

With a man infatuated

Getting her he gets elated

Even when the author uses a traditional form, such as the ballad, and can thus justify the sing-song monotony of his verse, he cannot be forgiven for the convolution of the language for the sake of rhyme. For example:

I wish to God, somehow, I could have saw

In her eyes the courage she had

Though laden with sorrow she set her jaw

In the presence of this lad.

“Ballad of Julia” (p. 39)

On reading this work, two questions come to mind: how can a publisher justify the printing of trash such as this? And, how could anyone write such trash in this age? Even if one does not know of the innovations of such major internationally known poets: Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Williams, Stein, Auden, MacLeish, Adrienne Rich and John Ashbery, there are many Canadian poets to provide models in excellence for the beginner: Atwood, Avison, bill bissett, bp nichol, Robert Kroetsch, Michael Ondaatje, and many others. The poems in this collection read like the cheap parodies of poor verse; but they aren’t parodies because the writer’s tone, by golly, is just too darn serious.