Alden Nowlan Selected Poems

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.

If I am asked suddenly to name those I consider to be the major Canadian
poets, I rarely think of mentioning Alden Nowlan. Yet as soon as I do
remember him, I know that he should have been included, and feel puzzled
and embarrassed that I failed to name him sooner. This may be explained
by the fact that, as a poet, he is so independently himself. He belonged
to no “school” of poetry, and his mature poems resemble no one
else’s. He is not easy to fit into any academic “development” of
Canadian poetry; yet when one encounters a truly successful poem of his
(and his collected work includes a remarkably large number of these), it
haunts one’s memory for ever.

This selection has been compiled by two of his fellow poets, Patrick
Lane and Lorna Crozier, in response to a recognized need. “So
often,” they write in their introduction, “we have heard students
say that in their studies of the classic Canadian anthologies, it is
Alden’s work that stands out, his poems they remember and take into
their lives as messages of love and wisdom.” This is exactly my own
experience, and I welcome Selected Poems for this reason, but even more
because the choices seem to be ad-mirable. Indeed (except for the
absence of “TermCancClinc,” “The Unhappy People,” and “In
Praise of the Great Bull Walrus,” all of which I miss greatly), I
cannot see how the collection could have been bettered.

The appearance of this book at the present time is all the more
gratifying since, in a period when the serious reading of poetry seems
to have declined disastrously, I can think of no good poet more likely
to re-engage the attention of the general reader than Alden Nowlan.

I do, however, have two regrets. First, there is no alphabetical
listing, so it is not easy to locate one’s favorite poems. Second, I
wish that the publishers—if only on the contents page—had given the
titles and dates of the volumes in which the individual poems originally
appeared.