Modern Canadian Poets: An Anthology has caused a bit of a national stir in Canada's media, with major columns in both national papers, The Globe and Mail, and now The National Post, dealing with it. Both columns say the anthology is, ultimately great, but take it to task for a variety of faults, that, frankly, don't quite compute. The reason - the commentators in Canada haven't read the book yet - it was launched a week ago in Britain, and is not yet available for sale in Canada (it will be in the new year), though review copies are now winging their way over. Questions about its ethos, its evaluative methods, its remit, etc, are all explained in the Introduction - explaining why, for example, we include poems by French-Canadian poets for the first time in a Canadian anthology of English poetry in more than 20 years; or why we stop at the birth year 1962. We discuss the younger generation, and encourage readers to pursue their work. We also introduce a number of other new perspectives on Canada anthologies, and Canadian poetry, but in the context of all the previous anthologies, which we read, along with 100s of major and minor poets of the last 110 years or so. I am glad to see this coverage, but it would be even more interesting a discussion if they'd bother to read the book first. Then maybe they can explain why, if Canadian Poetry is so respected, popular, read and admired in Britain, which some are claiming in Canada, ours (Evan Jones is the co-editor) is the first anthology published in the UK in over 52 years to survey Canadian poetry.
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?
Comments