Quebec Suite: Poems for and about Quebec

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French studies at the University
of Guelph.

Quebec Suite consists of 60 poems by 54 poets of varying degrees of
renown. It is a nostalgic collection, regretting and criticizing past
invasions and oppressions, suspicions and injustices. This trying to
make amends is unfortunately accompanied by mistakes in the handful of
French phrases. There are a number of very good poems, some witty (e.g.,
Susan Musgrave’s “Postcard to Quebec”), others moving and sincere.
The book offers no solution “to the Quebec/Canada conundrum,” as its
editor calls the conflict; what it does offer are evocations of a
different world—evocations that are worth pondering.