The Caged Tiger

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.

Louis Dudek has been publishing volumes of poetry for more than 50
years; The Caged Tiger appeared in his 80th year.

From the start he has shown an unabashedly didactic streak, never
fearing the poetry of intellectual statement, though always concerned
with both the nature and what he calls here the techné of art. He has
always shown signs of combining the role of poet with that of
prophet/seer, and this blending has become more and more evident as the
years have passed. He is fond of the proverbial apothegm, and his later
work sometimes takes the form of a succession of epigrams; the first of
his “Late Night Thoughts” here reads: “Run with the herd and you
may go over the precipice.”

In the past he has written long poems (Europe, Atlantis) as well as
shorter ones, and the same is true here. “Continuation III” follows
on from two earlier volumes (1981, 1990). I find that these extended
meditations break down into smaller units that resemble his shorter
poems. These “Continuation” poems have a desultory, never-ending
quality reminiscent of Pound’s Cantos, offering a reminder that Pound
has always been a prominent presence behind Dudek’s thought and work.

On reading the “Recent Poems” forming the first section of this
book, I was reminded that Pound once described Hardy’s poetry as
“the harvest of the novels.” These poems show Dudek at his
best—and free verse at its best; they may well be the harvest of his
earlier work in both prose and verse. The opening poem, “A Dead
Language,” reads: “Art is the language of God / that man was just
trying to learn // There have been a few fluent speakers / in the past
// but they are now incomprehensible / to the people // We still like
the sound of the words.” This surely says all that needs to be said
about the cultural malaise at the close of the 20th century. The Caged
Tiger contains a number of poems as good, or almost as good, as that.
They are enough to guarantee Dudek’s continuing eminence as poet-sage.