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| RIP |
The problem of Vers Libre has fallen into neglect of late, but this mongrel form of expression has left its mark upon even some of our most orthodox poets. It is to be hoped that with the cessation of German atrocities, the atrocities committed on the fair muses by the super-vers-librists will go to the junk-heap of junkerdom.He'd have been grumpier still had he known what the post-war would bring.
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| (cliquez pour agrandir) |
The year 1917 has been fruitful of good verse. Poetry was given a marked impetus at the beginning of the year by the publication a few weeks before of John W. Garvin's "Canadian Poets" (McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart). This notable work, which as steadily made its way in Canada, the United States and Great Britain, was recently referred to by the editor of The Poetry Review, London England, as a "monumental collection," and as "the one permanent celebration of the jubilee of the British North American Provinces."Such was the force unleashed by Garvin's "permanent celebration" (last printed in 1917) that Canadian poets took up all twelve spots, pushing aside Eliot's Prufrock, and other observations, Gurney's Severn and Somme, Sassoon's The Old Huntsman, and Other Poems, Yeats' The Wild Swan's at Coole, and posthumous collections by Alan Seeger and Edward Thomas. Lt Trotter's Canadian Twilight and Other Poems of War and of Peace is joined by:
In a Belgian Garden - F.O. CallThe 1916 "Season's Best" had wonderful things to say about new talent Robert Norwood, and his praises continued to be sung in 1917, but it seems much of the love had moved on:
Marching Men - Helena Coleman
Irish Lyrics and Ballads by Rev James B. Dollard
The New Joan - Katherine Hale
Songs of Ukrania by Florence Randall Livesay
Idylls of the Dane - Irene Elder Morton
The Piper and the Reed - Robert Norwood
Songs from a Young Man's Land by Clive Phillips-Wolley
Carry On - Virna Sheard
The Shell - A.C. Stewart
Heart of the Hills - Albert Durrant Watson
Of recent years no Canadian poet has made more solid progress than Albert D. Watson of Toronto. His 'Love and the Universe' (1913) established him among the leaders of the new school of Canadian verse; and 'Heart of the Hills', recently published, contains several poems of great originality and power. Of these, the most outstanding is 'To Worlds More Wide.' It is aglow with a divine spirit and message.
There is in it every element required: noble men, lovely women, a villain or two; also the string of Canadian patriotism is fingered, not tone harped upon; and there is an attempt to show the influence on a man of his early training and environment.Discussion of The Major is several paragraphs longer than any other novel. And why not? After all, Connor was then our biggest author, outselling even Gilbert Parker and L.M. Montgomery (whose Anne's House of Dreams failed to make the list).* Other novels considered to be of note include works by foreigners H.G. Wells, Mary Robert Rinehart, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, Phyllis Bottome, J.C. Snaith, Stephen McKenna, William MacHarg and Edwin Balmer. I'm sorry to report that only one other Canadian novelist, Basil King, is so much as mentioned. The description of his latest, The High Heart, is brief: "A love story of a Canadian governess with the war as a background."
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| Lillian Smith 1887-1983 RIP |
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| John Douglas Logan 1869 - 1929 RIP |
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| The New Apocalypse and Other Poems of Days and Deeds in France T.C. Logan Halifax: T.C. Allen, 1917 |
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| Bernard Freeman Trotter 16 June 1890 - 7 May 1917 RIP |
MY DAD AN’ I
My dad an’ I we’re splendid chums,
We’ll stick thro’ every ill that comes
Together like two sugar-plums,
My dad an’ I.
We go afishin’ in the spring,
An’ tho’ we oft get nary thing,
We’re each as happy as a king,
My dad an’ I.
We go agunnin’, too, for game,
An’ tho’ we don’t attain to fame,
We like it first rate just the same.
My dad an’ I.
I find, when I the past review,
He’s given me lickin’s very few:
We know each other through an’ through,
My dad an’ I.
Besides the cane he’s given me pills
An’ other things to cure my ills,
An’ all along he’s paid the bills;
I thank him for ’t.
Thus through the past, until this time,
When I do pen this little rhyme,
We have worked out a fair regime,
My dad an’ I.
Into the future none may look,
Fast is it shut, like a brass-bound book;
But we’ll pull through by hook or crook,
My dad an’ I.
Wolfville, 1905.
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| A Canadian Twilight and Other Poems of War and Peace Bernard Freeman Trotter Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, 1917 |
