Shadow Cabinet
Description
$9.95
ISBN 1-55065-067-X
DDC C811'.54
Author
Publisher
Year
Contributor
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.
Review
When the dust settles and a reliable history of Canadian poetry in
English in the second half of the 20th century comes to be written, it
will doubtless isolate a hitherto neglected “tradition.” This stems,
I think, from the combined examples of P.K. Page and George Johnston,
and consists of highly intelligent (but not “academic”) poems,
technically sophisticated and sensitive to rhythm and cadence, widely
ranging in tone (from the eloquent to the casual), varied in form but
never “free” in the belligerent sense. Practitioners will include,
among others, Don Coles, David Solway, and Jeffrey Donaldson. Also, I
suspect, Richard Sanger.
Shadow Cabinet (not to be confused with a shorter chapbook of the same
title that appeared in 1994) is Sanger’s first major publication, and
it is impressive. He has a gift for the arresting first line (“God the
Father has skipped town,” “Not much in the Muse Department of
late,” “Given a choice between survival and sex”) and a remarkable
control of tone both between and within poems. His subject matter ranges
from raccoons and veterans of the Spanish Civil War to a high-school
sex-instruction class and personal responses to nudes in art galleries.
I don’t claim to understand all the implications of these poems. But
Sanger is the kind of poet who establishes a sense of authority;
therefore, I readily grant that any uncertainty is mine, not his. This
is civilized, wonderfully varied, exquisitely poised verse. Very much a
product of the 1990s (“Inexpressive Adolescent,” “Touring the
Atrocities,” and the superb final poem, “Late in the West”),
Sanger’s poetry is firmly based on sanctioned disciplines relating to
artistic form and the control of language derived from the best examples
of the past. At least half a dozen of these poems have installed
themselves as a permanent part of my verse experience. Shadow Cabinet
announces a new poetic voice of the highest promise.