Louis Dudek's 1941 Diary

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
the author of Calling Texas and Earth Prime.

This beautifully produced book is a transcript of a diary kept by the
poet from 1941 to 1942, as he was feeling his way into the writing of
poetry. Dudek was working in Montreal for an advertising agency at the
time, and thinking a great deal about literature and philosophy. The
diary gives an interesting (and typical) portrait of a young artist.

A blurb on its back cover describes the book as a time capsule—which
is certainly accurate. It reproduces a page of the diary
photographically and has two selections from Dudek’s early poetry as
an appendix, giving context to his youthful struggles to write. The text
is actually rather brief, and about half of it consists of quotations
(mostly from Joyce’s Ulysses). This volume will be of interest to
Dudek scholars rather than to the general reader.