Notebooks: Selections from the AM Klein Papers

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
the author of Calling Texas and Earth Prime.

This book will be valuable to scholars as a source for understanding
Klein’s art and its development. The notebooks cover the 1940s and
1950s, a period during which Klein sought to create a modern style for
himself. They also provide important insights into Klein’s life and
his struggles with mental illness. The collection is admirably edited,
with a biographical chronology, full textual apparatus, and 45 pages of
explanatory notes. For all its value to Klein scholarship, this
beautifully prepared volume will interest the specialist rather than the
average reader of poetry. Of course, one of Klein’s preoccupations was
the decline of the “average reader of poetry.” At any rate, this is
a book to refer to more than to read, as the notebooks are fragmentary
and repetitive. Most readers who wish to go beyond Klein’s poems and
his novel, The Second Scroll, will find more to savor in the two volumes
of selected essays already published.