The New Long Poem Anthology. 2nd ed.

Gregory Pike is a sessional English instructor at the Memorial
University of Newfoundland.

Long poems are sequential works that drift back and forth between a set
of ideas, flushing out meaning and depth; they tease and draw out the
poetic moment, exploring how speaker and spoken shape each other. Long
poems are being written by our best writers and a good, up-to-date
anthology has been in demand. Expanding on the 1992 first edition, the
second edition of The New Long Poem Anthology meets that demand.

The anthology includes Robin Blaser’s “Image-Nation 21-24,”
George Bowring’s “Do Sink,” Dionne Brand’s “No Language is
Neutral,” Anne Carson’s “The Glass Essay,” Jeff Derksen’s
“Interface,” Christopher Dewdney’s “The Cenozoic Asylum,”
Louis Dudek’s “At Lac En Coeur,” Patrick Frisen’s “Anna,”
Diana Hartog’s “Oasis,” Roy Kiyooka’s “Pear Tree Poems,”
Robert Kroetsch’s “The Ledger,” Daphne Marlatt’s “Touch to My
Tongue,” Steve McCaffery’s “Teachable Texts,” David W.
McFadden’s “Gypsy Guitar,” Don McKay’s “Matériel,” Barry
McKinnon’s “Arrythmia,” Erin Mouré’s “The Wittgenstein
Letters to Mel Gibson’s Braveheart,” bpNichol’s “Inchoate
Road,” Michael Ondaatje’s “The Nine Sentiments,” Lisa
Robertson’s “‘Episode: Nurses’ from Debbie: An Epic,” George
Stanley’s “Mountains & Air,” Lola Lemire Tostevin’s
“Gyno-Text,” Yolande Villemaire’s “Quartz and Mica,” Fed
Wah’s “This Dendrite Map: Father/Mother Haibun,” and Phyllis
Webb’s “Naked Poems.” Thesen’s thankfully eclectic selection of
long poems—a genre that resists definition—outlines the growth of
the long poem without pigeonholing.

Greatly enhancing the book’s value is an appendix of statements by
the poets, many of whom explain their poetic processes, goals, and
influences. This is an excellent resource for teachers, students, and
poetry enthusiasts.