Contents
Introduction
11 Robert Gibbs: Portents and Promises
The 1940s and 1950s
19 Bliss Carman: Noons of Poppy
19 Alfred G. Bailey: The Lament of Montagnais
20 Lenore Pratt: The Loon
21 Dorothy Roberts: Turnpike
22 Alfred W. Purdy: Postscript
22 Alden Nowlan: All Down the Morning
23 Irving Layton: Two Songs for Sweet Voices
24 D. G. Jones: John Marin
25 Milton Acorn: Inland Gull
26 Miriam Waddington: Elegy for John Sutherland
27 Felix Anselm: Cats
27 Lawrence P. Spingarn: The Beachcombers
28 Susan Vinton: Choice
30 Ralph Gustafson: Her Arm a Flame
31 C. Frederick Boyle: End or Beginning
32 Milton Acorn: Pastoral
The 1960s
35 Fred Cogswell: Choosing a Printer
37 Kay Smith: Again with Music
37 M. Travis Lane: The Talisman
38 Gwendolyn MacEwen: Explodes, for Instance
39 Milton Acorn: On Saint Urbain Street
39 Alden Nowlan: First Impressions
40 Sanford Sternlicht: Pitt Street Grandmother
41 R. G. Everson: Birds in Winter
42 Michael Ondaatje: Description is a Bird
42 James Dougherty: Perils of an American
43 John Gill: there is a spark somewhere . . .
44 Alden Nowlan: Miracle at Indian River
50 Dorothy Fraser: Picking Blackberries
50 Elizabeth Brewster: In the Venus Restaurant
51 Alden Nowlan: Chance Encounter
52 Joy Kogawa: Woodtick
The 1970s
57 Kent Thompson: The Itch on the Body of Literature
60 Pat Lowther: The Chinese Greengrocers
61 Joyce Carol Oates: Violations
62 Eugene McNamara: Biography
63 rienzi crusz: immigrant
65 Alistair MacLeod: The Vastness of the Dark
86 Ralph Gustafson: The Morality of Rite Words . . .
87 Alden Nowlan: Another Reunion
87 Robert Kroestch: Dogteam Race in Manitoba
88 E. J. Carson: Canoe Lake and All
89 Don McKay: Fridge Nocturne
90 Tom Wayman: Neil Watt's Poem
91 Margaret Atwood: Rape Fantasies
100 Douglas Glover: Horse
108 Pier Giorgio DiCicco: The Poem against City Hospital
109 David Waltner-Toews: A Sunny Day in Canada
119 David Romtvedt: While illegally putting garbage . . .
120 Bronwen Wallace: Great-Aunt
121 Catherine M. Buckaway: Saskatchewan Dusk
121 Theresa Kishkan: Mid-Winter
123 Bert Almon: What Takes Us Now
124 Erin Mouré: Hello
The 1980s
127 Peter Thomas: Keeping Authentic Voices Alive
129 William Bauer: The Man Who Wished to Grow Okra
129 Conversation with a Chevy
130 Lela Parlow: Photograph in the Attic
130 M. Travis Lane: Whine
132 David Adams Richards: La Roche
136 Allan Donaldson: Elegy for a Sergeant
147 Carol Shields: Home
153 Robert Gibbs: Summer Composition
154 Fred Cogswell: Sestina: To My Sister
156 Raymond Souster: For Alden Nowlan, Poet
157 Walter McDonald: Things We Didn't Tell Our Parents
158 Steven Laird: A Carpenter's Marriage
163 George Elliott Clarke: Cherrybrook Blues
164 Kirk Wirsig: Naomi, Could You Be the Milkmaid . . .
165 Robert R. Ward: Notes Concerning the Ontogeny of Flight
166 Fred Johnston: Not Another Belfast Poem
167 Nathan Cervo: The Way
168 Carl Leggo: Pirate's Treasure
The 1990s
173 Don McKay: Local Wilderness
175 Ann Copeland: Border Crossing
187 R. B. Richards: black
188 Liliane Welch: Heresies
189 Derk Wynand: Aerial Photograph
189 Greg Hollingshead: Dancers
193 George Thaniel: Ah!
193 The Ways of Nature
193 Anna Synenko: God slips through my fingers like water
194 Tim Lilburn: Tree Monk Sings to the Wilderness
195 Brian Bartlett: Diminished
196 Tim Bowling: Old Barns
197 John Steffler: For My Execution
198 Anne Simpson: The Day Elvis Rose from the Dead
201 Cellan Jay: Learning English
202 Don Domanski: Selections from Firedrake
206 Eric Ormsby: Rooster
207 Susan Downe: Upon My Death: Instructions
208 Kim Roberts: A Little Poem about Commitment
208 Carole Langille: Breakdown
209 Karen Connelly: Ephemeroptera
211 Joyce Marshall: Like All of Us
220 Lynn Coady: Batter My Heart
Afterword
233 Don McKay: Common Sense and Magic
233 Index
246 Permissions
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