Earle Birney: A Life

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.

There were many sides to Earle Birney. Ultimately, of course, he will be
remembered as a poet, as the author of some of the most memorable
Canadian poems of the century. But he lived other lives as well. There
were the intensely political years of the 1930s, when he was
passionately committed to Trotskyism; the lifelong love/hate
relationship with the world of the university, which provided him with a
rather frustrating livelihood; the life of action, manifesting itself in
mountaineering and eluding him in World War II when he found himself a
little too old for military heroics; and finally the sexual life—the
long and ultimately depressing record of his insatiate womanizing.

As his biographer, Elspeth Cameron was faced with two major problems.
The first, which might superficially be considered an advantage, was the
sheer bulk of material. Birney was an inveterate hoarder, and the Birney
papers at the University of Toronto could on their own provide copy for
a much longer account than is contained in this very long book. Cameron
had to select rigorously. The second concerns the readership for which
the book is intended. Economically, a book of this size and scope will
have to interest a far larger range of people than those who are
seriously interested in Birney’s poetry.

Cameron made what was doubtless the right choice. She chose to tell the
story in all its variety and bewildering multiplicity. Birney comes
across as a decidedly human figure—half endearing, half irritating,
highly talented yet deeply flawed. The life is interesting for its own
sake, even if the details are sometimes expendable; after all, if one
responds to “From the Hazel Bough” as poetry, it doesn’t matter
very much which woman Birney had in mind at the time. All in all, this
is, as they say a very good read, though the deepest Birney—the Birney
who produced the greatest poems— inevitably eludes Cameron and
everyone else.