Introductions: Poets Present Poets

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.

Introductions is based on a good and—so far as I know—original idea.
Thirteen well-established Canadian poets were each invited to propose
and introduce a younger poet. Each introducer was assigned two pages,
while each chosen poet was allowed up to six.

The danger of such a scheme, I suppose, is that the established poets
may choose writers who offer no more than pale imitations of their own
work. This doesn’t happen here. Instead, the arrangement proves
helpful for readers. If you especially admire several of the established
poets, you are likely to respond to those whom they find congenial. Thus
P.K. Page chooses Marilyn Bowering, whose poems contain a strain of
mystical vision shared with Page herself, while Margaret Avison
introduces George Whipple, whose work draws on a comparable religious
dimension to that of the author of The Dumbfounding. (Whipple’s “A
Hymn to God the Father” may be the finest poem in the book.)
Similarly, Richard Outram chooses George Murray, who writes articulately
and wittily—not like Outram but with something of his zany
imagination. By the same token, though, the vice-versa principle may
also apply. Thus I personally fail to respond to the work of Erin
Mouré, and I could make little of her protégée.

As my opening examples suggest, not all the introduced poets are
beginners. Marilyn Bowering, for instance, has already earned a place in
The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, and George Whipple has been
publishing for almost 20 years. Indeed, only one poet, Sheila Waite, is
currently unpublished. But, as Page says of Bowering, “she has had
remarkably little critical attention,” and this is also true of the
rest. All in all, Introductions illustrates the range of contemporary
Canadian poetry. I did not discover an indisputably major talent, but
there is some very solid work presented here.