The Poets Of Canada

Canadian Poetry.

Compiled in 1976 by George Woodcock, this book lists works by 600 poets in 1200 books and booklets during the era leading up to Canada's literary coming of age. "This listing of the writings in verse of Canadian poets between 1960 and 1973 came into existence because I was invited by Carl F. Klinck, the General Editor of the Literary History of Canada, to write for a new edition of that work the chapter covering poetry published in Canada since 1960. It was obvious that my first need was an adequate list, for I very soon realized that in quantity, even more than in character, the poetry published in Canada during the past decade has differed radically from what had appeared at any other time in the literary progress of our country." - Introductory note by George Woodcock

As one of the formative periods in Canadian history, the late nineteenth century witnessed the birth of a nation, a people, and a literature. In this study of Canada's first 'school' of poets, D.M.R. Bentley combines archival work, including extensive research in periodicals and newspapers, with close readings of the work of Charles G.D. Roberts, Archibald Lampman, Bliss Carman, William Wilfred Campbell, Duncan Campbell Scott, and Frederick George Scott. Bentley chronicles the formation, reception, national and international successes, and eventual disintegration (after the 1895 'War Among the Poets') of the Confederation Group, whose poetry forever changed the perception and direction of Canadian literature. With the aid of biographical, political, and sociological analyses, Bentley's literary history delineates the group's political, aesthetic, and thematic dispositions and characteristics, and contextualizes them not only within Canadian history and politics, but also within contemporary intellectual and literary currents, including Romantic nationalism, 'Canadianism', and poetic formalism. Bentley casts new light on the poets' commonalities - such as their debt to Young Ireland, their commitment to careful workmanship, and their participation in the American mind-cure movement - as well as on their most accomplished and anthologized poems from 1880 to 1897. In the process, he presents a compelling case for the literary and historical importance of these six men and their poems in light of Canada's cultural and political past, and defends their right to be known as Canada's first poetic fraternity at a time when Canada was striving to achieve literary and national distinction. The Confederation Group of Canadian Poets, 1880-1897 is an erudite and innovative work of literary history and critical interpretation that belongs on the bookshelf of every serious scholar of literary studies.

The selections in this survey of the narrative and lyric poets of Confederation and the later nineteenth century have been chosen to remind readers of the distances and diversities involved as Canadians struggled toward nationhood. Along with essays on Sangster and Mair, the first poets consciously writing of the Canadian scene and the Canadian identity, there are individual studies of Crawford, Roberts, Lampman, Scott and Service. Some of the authors analyse a single work in a poet's canon; others consider several themes or evaluate a poet's philosophical or religious position. To these essays are added three by Norman Newton, George Woodcock and Roy Daniells on the era of "high colonialism". The book contains ten pieces published in the journal Canadian Literature over the last thirteen years and five new ones written specifically to enhance this collection.

The best in four decades of exceptional Canadian poetry, now in a limited hardcover edition. The poets in this anthology, all of whom matured creatively between 1920 and 1960, considered it one of their primary obligations to modernize Canadian writing, to bring the country's poetry out of late Romantic stasis after the Great War into a fertile and combative response to the cultural, political, technological, philosophical, religious, and economic conditions of the modern era. In their common reaction against Romanticism, and in their commitments to modern poetry's possibilities of profound newness, the poets in this volume make up one great movement in Canada's cultural history. The anthology includes: • 250 poems by 44 poets • Regionally diverse voices from Newfoundland, the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies, and B.C. • Extensive selections of the work of major poets • An afterword and biographical headnotes provide important historical and literary context The poets included in Canadian Poetry from 1920 to 1960 are: Frank Oliver Call; Louise Morey Bowman; Raymond Knister; Joe Wallace; E.J. Pratt; W.W. E. Ross; F.R. Scott; A.J.M. Smith; Charles Bruce; Earle Birney; A.M. Klein; Dorothy Livesay; Leo Kennedy; Audrey Alexandra Brown; Kenneth Leslie; Robert Finch; Floris Clark McLaren; L.A. Mackay; Anne Marriott; Bertram Warr; Patrick Anderson; P.K. Page; Kay Smith; Miriam Waddington; Margaret Avison; A.G. Bailey; Louis Dudek; John Glassco; Ralph Gustafson; Raymond Souster; Irving Layton; Roy Daniells; Douglas LePan; George Whalley; James Reaney; Elizabeth Brewster; George Johnston; Goodridge MacDonald; Jay MacPherson; Anne Wilkinson; Phyllis Webb; Wilfred Watson; R.A.D. Ford; Eldon Grier.