The Insecurity of Art: Essays on Poetics

A.T.J. Cairns was Associate Professor of English at the University of Calgary.

This volume constitutes a rather random survey of widely varying opinions on “how we’ve got to where we are now in poetry.” Its range — both of length (some entries cover barely more than a page; others more than twenty) and quality — is wide almost to the point of dislocation; and there are some items — mercifully rare — which are really nothing but pretentiously meaningless verbal acrobatics.

The majority of the pieces, however, are of considerable quality; whether they are purely Canadian ruminations or the knowledgeable, wide-ranging essays of such figures as Louis Dudek, Robert Allen (whose balanced intelligence provides the reader with a particularly effective opening essay on “Post-Mortemism”), Ken Norris, and Richard Sommer. There is a concise, caustic item contra poetry readings by John Glassco that by itself demonstrates the irrelevance of length; and, as a matter of fact, it is on the whole the older writers who come off best, substance easily outgunning slangy stylishness.

Two themes particularly relevant to our present time recur throughout the volume in various guises. The first is summed up in Louis Dudek’s quotation from John Fowles: “I think we’ve had quite enough of avant-garde art in the 20th century ....” Perhaps less debatable, more omnipresent, and infinitely sadder is the theme/lament of the same author’s essay “Whatever Happened to Poetry,” in which he joins many of the other authors in recording how, apparently irreversibly, knowledge and appreciation of poetry “... has vanished from our society.” Certainly anyone still interested in that very special art will find something to consider in this volume.