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Last Updated: Jun 23rd, 2009 - 21:35:15 |
Review
The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English
Unfortunately, or perhaps inevitably, Atwood cannot really follow in Smith’s footsteps. She is not a modernist, and she is not an aesthetic critic. In defining the modern shift in poetry represented by Smith and Scott, she describes it somewhat pejoratively as “noun‑and‑adjective description, formal elegance and verbal felicity” and so forth, while she adds that an entirely different strain interests her more deeply:
Jun 24, 2009, 00:01
Review
Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel
The influence of surrealism in The Angel may be seen in the way that reality is made to dissolve into the supernatural. Buñuel wants to push our conventional “rational” world over the brink, into mystery, “the marvelous world of the unknown.” He says he has no desire to preach; he simply wants to open up the unconscious.
Jun 24, 2009, 12:01
Review
The Search for Reality: J.W. Morrice
Morrice had every reason to be happy: lots of money, time to travel, in France, on the Riviera, in North Africa, in the West Indies; a charming mistress; music, friends, absinthe, and a spacious artist’s studio in Paris. (His father was a wealthy textile manufacturer in Montreal.)
Jun 24, 2009, 12:01
Review
The Revelation of Photography as Art and as Witness
It’s a question of reality. The moving‑picture film, as we know, is a sequence of still shots. Put together, these give us the illusion of motion, which—as Gérald Robitaille says in his fascinating book on art—was the aim of the artist for many millennia before the discovery of film. Siegfried Kracauer in his provocative book Theory of Film…
Jun 24, 2009, 12:01
Review
Translations Enrich French & English Literature
This is the first Canadian translation of a novel by Hugh MacLennan, considering that his first novel in French, Two Solitudes, a few years ago, was published in France. The present undertaking, by HMH in Montreal, is a sign of growing interest on both sides in the dual‑language character of literature in Canada and in the immense possibilities that this fact presents.
Jun 24, 2009, 11:01
Review
Louis’ Dues
I am a poet who at one time infiltrated the university--to see if I could somehow transform the teaching profession. To make it relevant to the concerns of life and of living poetry. I have been a radical reformer in this way--but the radicalism is not destructive, it is to bring back the values of our civilization.
Jun 24, 2009, 00:01
Review
Irving Layton: A Vicarious Rebel
Irving Layton’s new Collected Poems (McClelland and Stewart) is so impressive a book, to the eye, that my first thought was to put away pride and prejudice and acknowledge it as a great achievement. Nothing would be easier, or more pleasant. I’m all for poetry; and to be overcome by it would be the happiest kind of surrender.
Jun 24, 2009, 00:01
Review
Canadian Poet Roland Giguère: One Among the Chosen
Roland Giguère is still a young poet (born in 1929), but he has already won a considerable reputation, standing with Gilles Hénault, Jean‑Guy Pilon, and Paul‑Marie Lapointe in his own generation. His poetry has moved through several styles, sometimes exploring the very long line, or relaxing altogether into poetic‑prose paragraphs.
Jun 24, 2009, 00:01
Review
Through Hell With a Preacher
But the man who can’t put his own head together—or his life— begins to preach to the world. Out of his personal trouble and alienation he rises suddenly to the theme of total condemnation of society, and of the world, and he becomes a prophet of spiritual revelation, announcing a visionary gospel.
Jun 24, 2009, 00:01
Review
Ken Norris On The Twentieth Century
He was one of the key figures in the Vehicule Poets group in the 1970s, of which more later. He has edited a number of important anthologies of poetry and of criticism — recently, with Peter Van Toorn, The Insecurities of Art, and with Bob Hilderley Poets 88 — and he has brought out a good dozen of his own books of poetry from Montreal, Kingston, and Toronto, through various presses.
Jun 24, 2009, 00:01
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