It can be hard to know how to approach an anthology of this nature. Tuck your question marks into your pocket and just read, hoping\u2014as you do with every new poetry book\u2014to be shown a poem that might illuminate the dark little corners of your life? Pretend you don\u2019t realize that the editors of this volume are unavoidably also in the business of canon-making? Most poetry collections necessarily direct your attention to what\u2019s included, but it\u2019s hard to crack the spine of this one without musing as to what may not have been included.<\/p>\n
Included: a satisfying amuse-bouche sampling of some of Canada\u2019s most active and celebrated contemporary poets: Ken Babstock, Anne Compton, Barry Dempster, Don Domanski, Sue Goyette, Stephen Heighton, Sonnet L\u2019Abb\u00e9, Evelyn Lau, Ross Leckie, Catherine Owen, Peter Sanger, Robyn Sarah, David Seymour, Karen Solie, Zachariah Wells, Patricia Young, Jan Zwicky. How\u2019s that for a tasting menu?<\/p>\n
Stephen Heighton\u2019s ode \u201cSome Other Just Ones\u201d has made the social media rounds as a reading he gave at The Banff Centre for the Arts in 2010. The poem gives a nod to its poetic ancestors in \u201ca footnote to Borges,\u201d though it also can perhaps trace a thread through Neruda in one sense, and through New Brunswick\u2019s Herm\u00e9n\u00e9gilde Chiasson in another. In the best tradition of love poetry, Heighton\u2019s \u201cSome Other Ones\u201d is exceptionally well-read.<\/p>\n
Other significant bright spots: Zachariah Wells sings a sonnet to the lyrebird, Maureen Hynes eulogizes her last cigarette, Marilyn Gear Pilling repudiates Billy Collins, Catherine Owen buys an iceberg, Paul Tyler pushes back against the impudent Manitoba maple, Nick Thran calls out Spring, and Ross Leckie reasons with what we can actually know. Leckie\u2019s poem, \u201cThe Critique of Pure Reason,\u201d is my vote for Best of<\/em> the Best Canadian Poetry<\/em>, for its sublime meld of the glittering external world with the constant churning of the human quest to really know what it is we know.<\/p>\n What it does\u2014providing an accessible overview what some Canadian poets were publishing in literary journals in 2010\u2014this collection does well. If it reads at times as a bit heavy on the lyric, one can equally point to a variety of formal choices, from the sonnet through to the prose poem, though not to anything more experimental or avant-garde. Perhaps that isn\u2019t necessary. In the introduction, series editor Molly Peacock is clear about where the annual collection is aimed. It is created \u201cfor all who are curious about Canadian poetry but need a place for such curiosity to begin,\u201d and she happily notes that previous volumes have been found in living rooms and waiting rooms across the country.<\/p>\n The Best Canadian Poetry in English<\/em> is not necessarily intended, therefore, to delight the members of that small audience who may have read the poems when they first appeared in literary journals such as Descant<\/em>, Prairie Fire<\/em>, or indeed Arc Poetry Magazine<\/em>, and therefore arguably not intended for this reviewer or those inclined to read this review. As an introduction to Canadian poetry, the collection is heavily weighted towards that fuzzy target of \u201caccessibility.\u201d In this respect\u2014teasing the appetite for poetry and hopefully sending people running to their bookstores, libraries or podcasts for more\u2014it does seem to achieve its stated vision. Would that we could say the same of all books of poetry published in a year.<\/p>\n One quibble: a section following the poems, called \u201cPoem Notes and Commentaries,\u201d comes perilously close to ruining the reading experience by permitting poets to add additional thoughts about the genesis of, or their approach to, their selected poems. In sections of this kind, if they must be included at all, brevity is best: Anne Compton, Glen Downie, and Anne-Marie Turza give some of the best examples of how to illuminate a poem in this way. Fifty poems were included in the Best of 2010: cutting this section down, or out entirely, might make room for another ten.<\/p>\n The series has a different editor each year. I confess that my own aesthetic runs snugly alongside Crozier\u2019s, so I enjoyed this collection immensely, returning to it several times and photocopying one or two poems for a coveted place on my fridge (thank you Ross Leckie, Paul Tyler). At the same time, an anthology that calls itself the \u201cBest of Canadian Poetry in English\u201d cannot escape the reality that it is, in effect, contributing to what we love\/hate to call \u201cThe Canadian Canon.\u201d For this reason, a wide variety in choice among the annual editors will make for the broadest possible survey over time, and could eventually elevate the series beyond functioning merely as a tasting menu a year to the sumptuous feast of a decade.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rhonda Douglas <\/strong>serves on the Arc <\/em>editorial board. She has not won any prizes her parents would recognize.<\/p>\n Poems \u2018for all who are curious\u2019 It can be hard to know how to approach an anthology of this nature. Tuck your question marks into your pocket and just read, hoping\u2014as you do with every new poetry book\u2014to be shown a poem that might illuminate the dark little corners of your life? Pretend you don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1707,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"9905,9810,10053,10829","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1740,1875],"tags":[],"genre":[21],"publisher":[219],"issue":[83],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3120,3122,3080],"topic":[3170],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10010"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10010"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=10010"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=10010"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=10010"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=10010"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=10010"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=10010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/h3>\n
Check out more from Rhonda in print! Subscribe today<\/a> to receive the Arc Poetry Annual 2012: Poet vs. Poet<\/em><\/a>.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"