As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy's Story

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.

Leo Kennedy is the least-known of the group known as “the McGill
poets,” who flourished in the 1920s and also included A.J.M. Smith,
F.R. Scott, and A.M. Klein. Kennedy was the first to publish a volume of
poems—The Shrouding in 1933—but he never published another. He
disappeared into the frenetic world of advertising while the others
built literary reputations—but he outlived all of them. Patricia
Morley met him in 1977 and clearly came under the spell of his
forthrightness and wit. “I feel privileged to have known him,” she
states on the last page of text. The feeling was reciprocated;
apparently it was Kennedy who, somewhat characteristically, asked her to
write his biography.

Closer in some respects to a memoir, As Though Life Mattered is
certainly not an “official biography,” but it is a partisan one, and
this results in both advantages and disadvantages. On the credit side,
we are offered a wealth of biographical information that has not been
accessible before, and Kennedy comes across as probably the most humanly
interesting of the group—infuriating to live with, no doubt, but
fascinating to read about.

The disadvantages are, I think, twofold. First, it is still difficult
to reconcile the “feisty” character who emerges from this biography
with the death-possessed, curiously conventional poet of The Shrouding.
(Kennedy seems, in fact, to be more successful as a writer of light
verse, though this has never been collected and we encounter only
tantalizing glimpses in the course of this book.) More seriously, Morley
ignores the critical strictures that have been brought against
Kennedy’s poetry. Thus, she quotes some easily controverted newspaper
reactions to The Shrouding but omits all reference to Harold
Rosenberg’s damaging review in Poetry; similarly, while Francis
Zichy’s searching analysis is listed in her bibliography, it is never
referred to in her text.

While this is unfortunate, we should be grateful to Morley for the
light she casts on a minor but flamboyant Canadian writer and
personality.