What's Wrong? What's Right?

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of education at the University of
Prince Edward Island and an honorary chief of the Mi’kmaq of Prince
Edward Island.

With all the urbanity of a 20th-century Matthew Arnold, John Calder
comments on the culture (and anarchy) of his day. Seemingly comfortably
situated in later life (he prefers Paris), he casts his eye over what he
likes and dislikes—hence the title. As a Renaissance man, Calder has
long partaken of the Western canon: allusive echoes of it are to be
found in such poems as “Envoi” and “A Brief History of Slavery.”
At times, he is very much the old Roman, as in “Just Bow.” He
comments on his own life in “The Prodigal Muse” and “Little
Tragedy,” expresses criticism in “The Death of Princess Di” and
“Class,” and proves to be no mean rhymester in the lines “Just an
ephemery / Are names in the memory.” Overall, his attitude to life
seems to be one of “carpe diem”—an attitude stemming from his
wistful acknowledgment that “we all are mortal.”

Septuagenarian John Calder calls his poems “fruits of reflection”;
they will certainly grace many an older reader’s bedside table.