Canadian Poetry. 2007

In my high school social studies class (a long long long time ago) we were asked to write about current events and a famous Canadian, on the list of approved people was Leonard Cohen. I had listened to some of Cohen's music, was surprised to discover he is a respected poet, and was embarrassed (at my ignorance) to discover he is Canadian. I knew Cohen because of his music but it was his poetry that led me to discover the wealth of Canadian poets from E.J. Pratt to Margaret Atwood and many more. I was amazed to discover so many talented poets from such a short period of history and asked myself- why have I never heard of these people?

My question was one that defines much of Canada’s poetic heritage; a heritage of talented writers often ignored outside (and inside) the countries borders. Without the myriad of poetic history that many other countries have established over the course of centuries Canadian poetry is dismissed as an insignificant topic. International recognition is still a difficult task for Canadian poets to achieve. Regardless, poets like F.R. Scott, Dorothy Livesay, and Irving Layton have had a huge impact on Canadian poetry, challenging tradition, breaking down barriers, and exploring new poetic styles and themes, and in the process creating a poetic heritage. Modern and contemporary poets continue to expound a vast variety of content form and style; many of their poems with allusions to politics, economics, religion, and important social event from around the world.

One of the many established aspects of poetry that Canada’s modern poets challenged was form. Pre-modern poetry in Canada had the tendency to follow more static traditional Romantic and Victorian forms. Modern Canadian poets like P.K. Page and many others chose different forms to express their poetic vision. Page produced poems with such varying structure that they had both no, and complex form at once. Page’s poem “Arras” has at times an irregular rhyme pattern, no rhyme, and the intentional lack of rhyme: “Through whose eye / did it insulate in furled disguise […]” (5-6). Page uses an open form, changing the rhyme scheme, or lack there of, as the poem progresses. Notice the irregular rhyme scheme, the irregular length of line, and the use of enjambment, caesura, and end stopping in a single stanza, and the irregular length of the lines; “I ask, what did they deal me in this pack? / The cards, all suit, are royal when I look. / My fingerprints slipping on a monarch’s face / twitch and grow slack. / I want a hand to clutch, a heart to crack” (14-18). Although Page is well known for altering the form of her poems she is far from the only modern Canadian poet to do so. To varying degrees poets like F.R. Scott, Irving Layton, and Al Purdy would also play with form to convey new ideas.

Another convention of established poetry Canada’s modern poets rebelled against was the use of Romantic poetic language. A chief principle for these poets was to be exact in their choice of words and language, clarity and conciseness was paramount for Al Purdy and F.R. Scott. Purdy used vernacular language to set a satirical tone in much of his poetry. Purdy’s poem “At The Quinte Hotel” is overflowing with satire and vernacular: “[…] Now I am a sensitive man / so I say to him mildly as hell / “You shouldn’ta knocked over that good beer […]” (14-16). Purdy’s use of vernacular allows him to create the unexpected by juxtaposing crude language and simplistic beauty. In opposition to the (sometimes) simplistic beauty of Purdy’s vernacular are his misogynistic poems. Purdy’s representation of his wife’s grief from menstruation in “Home-Made Beer” is an attempt to identify with the common man, the attempt to create poetry for those who ‘typically’ don’t appreciate poetry.

F.R. Scott on the other hand uses the simplest language possible to convey his ideas. Scott’s poems resemble news stories you would hear on the radio or television taking only a few seconds to tell and having a significant impact considering their length. “After ten years of research / This great scientist / Made so valuable a discovery / That a big corporation actually paid him $150,000 / To keep it off the market” (Scott, Great discovery). Scott’s use of vernacular is not intended to attract the common man; rather is intended to be understood by everyone so the social message might reach as many people as possible. For Scott the subject of poetry was paramount and vernacular language a tool to achieve a wider audience.

The subject matter in modern Canadian poetry ranges far and wide from scenes of nature to politics to one-night stands. F.R. Scott was a lawyer, a socialist and a poet; his poems were a reflection of his values and political beliefs. In Scott’s poem “W.L.M.K” he asserts Mackenzie King as a man of “Ambiguity, inactivity, and political longevity” (32). Scott attacks the Canadian Prime Minister accredited with creating the old-age pension, unemployment insurance, and the family allowance; a curious reaction for an avid socialist I thought; soon, however, I realized the poets beliefs were part of a poem’s significance, and varies from one poet to another, the other significant aspect of modern Canadian poetry is it’s constant challenging of our beliefs.

Modern Canadian poets did not, however, stop at challenging the Canadian resolve solely on domestic issues. Dorothy Livesay concerned herself with important international issues and the Canadian response to them, likely contributing to our strong national sense of international justice. Livesay’s “Spain” is in response to the complacency in Canada to the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Many countries from around the world including Ireland, the Soviet Union, Mexico, and the United States (unofficially for the U.S.A) allied themselves with a side in the conflict, historians see the Spanish Civil War as the prelude to World War II. The comfortable Canadian middle class should have been more attentive to the political situation in Europe-for their ignorance they paid a dear price, the loss of thousands in the Second World War. Modern Canadian poets confronted every aspect of life they could, from the kind of words we considered fit for literature to our notions of politics, and justice, and by doing so dare Canadians to define themselves.

Despite Canada’s rather short existence many poets have contributed to its poetic history and in doing so have created a poetic and literary heritage for future generations to follow. Canada’s modern poets contributed a tireless struggle against complacency, ignorance, and convention to our literary heritage that lives on in poets like Margaret Atwood and Leonard Cohen. Although Margaret Atwood was only beginning her career at the end of the modern Canadian poetic movement she espoused the struggle against injustice her predecessors began. Margaret Atwood was an important voice for the feminist movement in Canada using her poems to expose, not only, the inequalities faced by women, but also, the patriarchal ideas common in Canadian society. The situation in Atwood’s “They Eat Out” is an allegory to Canadian society and the problems faced by women “In restaurants we argue / over which of us will pay for your funeral” (1-2); Atwood represents the struggle for women to be accepted as having the right to work, illustrating the patriarchal and sometimes misogynistic outlook of men before and after the 1960’s.

Leonard Cohen too exemplifies the living heritage of Canadian Poetry. In his poems Cohen often highlights the struggle against prejudice and social problems affecting marginalized people. Cohen’s “The Music Crept By Us” demonstrates the social problems faced by the disadvantaged such as poverty alcoholism and sexually transmitted diseases “I’d like to remind / the management / that the drinks are watered / and the hat-check girl / has syphilis […]” (1-5). Cohen also demonstrates the prevalence of racism and the struggle against it in “The Genius” by sarcastically adopting stereotypes of Jewish people to illustrate the absurdity of racism “For you / I will be a ghetto jew / and dance / and put white stockings / on my twisted limbs / and poison wells/ across the town […] / For you / I will be a banker jew […] / For you / I will be a doctor jew […]” (1-27). Cohen’s poems and others serve as continuations and contributions to Canada’s literary heritage.

Canada’s literary heritage is one with a rich variety of form, language, theme and style; it has developed for over a hundred years and has been significantly contributed to by Canada’s modern poets. They have created a tough poetic and literary landscape that: refuses to be idle, challenges Canadians to be open minded and accepting of new ideas, challenge convention, and always demand better from ourselves. No doubt the modern Canadian poets have helped to sculpt Canadians sense of justice and morality, to become a nation of many peoples, creeds, religions, and affiliations. Irving Layton sums up the poet’s role as a voice against ignorance: “There are brightest apples on those trees / but until I, fabulist, have spoken / they do not know their significance” (Layton, “The Fertile Muck”).