When asked the question "what is the power of poetry?," writer Ian Williams said "poetry punctures the surface." Williams' statement—that poetry matters and that it does something—is at the heart of this book. Building from this core idea that poetry perforates the everyday to give greater range to our lives and our thinking, the practical and pedagogical aim of this book is twofold: the first aim is to provide students with an introduction to the key cultural, political, and historical events that inform twentieth- and twenty-first-century Canadian poetry; and to familiarize those same readers with poetic movements, trends, and forms of the same time period. This book addresses the aesthetic and social contexts of Canadian poetry written in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: it models for its readers the critical and theoretical discourses needed to understand the contexts of literary production in Canada. Put differently, readers need a sense of the "where" and "how" of poetic production to help situate them in the "what" of poetry itself. In addition to offering a historically contextualized overview of the significant movements, developments, and poets of this time period, this book also familiarizes readers with key moments of reflection and rupture, such as the effects of economic and ecological crisis, global conflicts, and debates around appropriation of culture. This book is built on the premise that poetry in Canada does not happen outside of political, social, and cultural contexts.
Author(s): Erin Wunker
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 215
City: New York
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
1 Emergent Patterns and Wandering Trajectories
“Good Poetry”: Poetic Circulation
Contexts for Critical Consideration
Pattern One: Inventing Tropes of Indigenous Peoples
Pattern Two: Projects of Settlement
Pattern Three: Wandering Trajectories
Case Study: Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, and Wandering Trajectories
Pattern Four: The Work of Poetry Anthologies
Key Terms for Preface and Introduction
Notes
Works Cited
2 Poetry of Critique, Engagement, and Transnationalism
Canada and the First World War: Effects and Poetics
Tracking Modernist Shifts
Case Study: E.J. Pratt and the Long Poem
Case Study: Little Magazines and Aesthetic Developments in Poetry
Case Study: F.R. Scott, Aesthetics, and Poetics That “Do” Things
Case Study: Dorothy Livesay, Leo Kennedy, and Poetics of Engagement and Transnationalism
Conclusion
Key Terms
Notes
Works Cited
3 Poetic Witness and the 1940s
Case Study: Preview (1942–45), First Statement (1942–45), and Northern Review (1945–56)
Case Study: P.K. Page
Case Study: A.M. Klein
Conclusion
Key Terms
Notes
For Further Reading
Works Cited
4 Post-War Poetics and New National Mythologies
After the Report
Developing Poetic Infrastructures
Case Study: Phyllis Webb, Poet of Space and Silences
Case Study: TISH and Experimentations With Perception
Case Study: Nicole Brossard
Case Study: The Kootenay School of Writing, Expo ’86, and The Giantesses
Conclusion
Key Terms
Notes
For Further Reading
Works Cited
5 Indigenous Poetics
Indigenous Poetics
Case Study: E. Pauline Johnson
Case Study: Rita Joe and Annharte
Case Study: Jeannette Armstrong
Case Study: Armand Garnet Ruffo
Case Study: Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm
Idle No More
Case Study: Jordan Abel
Conclusion
Key Terms
Notes
For Further Reading
Works Cited
6 Contemporary Poetics and Planetary Engagements
The Long Poem
From Reinventing to Reorienting History
Case Study: Dionne Brand
Case Study Erín Moure
Case Study: Sina Queyras and Lyric Conceptualism
Case Study: Anne Carson
From Reorientation to Rerooting
Case Study: Canisia Lubrin
Conclusion
Key Terms
Notes
For Further Reading
Works Cited
Index
