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Gwendolyn MacEwen: Volume 1 (1)
Her poetry is both groundbreaking and unforgettable. Now you can enjoy the powerful first works of this poet in The Poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen, Volume The Early Years . These poems show the beginnings of a poetic style that inspired other poets and amazed readers for years. Her poetic voice is in turns playful, melancholy and daring; this is a must-read for all fans of MacEwen and poetry lovers that want an introduction to this important writer.
175 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1993
About the author
Gwendolyn MacEwen
35 books30 followersGwendolyn MacEwen was one of Canada's most celebrated writers publishing several stories and many works of poetry throughout her career. She was born in Toronto, Ontario on September 1, 1941 to Elsie and Alick MacEwen. As a child she attended public schools in both Toronto and Winnipeg, and when she was seventeen her first poem was published in the Canadian Forum, a journal which published the works of both new and renowned writers. At the age of eighteen she left school to pursue a full time career as a writer and at the same time opened a Toronto coffee house, "The Trojan Horse".
As a child Gwendolyn didn't get the best care from her parents. Her mother was mentally unstable, spending most of her life in institutions and her father was largely an alcoholic. However this may have been what led to her writing being so heavily focused on mythology, dreams, magic, and history. After leaving school Gwendolyn taught herself several different languages including Greek, French, Arabic and Hebrew, which she used to translate many of her poems. Her fluency in several languages is what most likely encouraged her to make references to cultures outside of Canada. Gwendolyn tended to focus on more surreal ideas in her writing and she had her own unique way of expressing them when compared to other poets from her time. A lot of her poetry involved changing the surrealism into reality by using strong imagery and often allegory. The cultures she studied often showed up in her work as part of the overall imagery and allusions to historical events were quite common.
Her volume of poems "The Shadow-Maker" won the Governor General's Award in 1969 and included many poems such as her famous "Dark Pines Under Water". During the mid eighties she was a writer in residence at the University of Western Ontario and then later the University of Toronto. Gwendolyn died in 1987 at the age of 46 from what was believed to have been health problems due to alcohol. Although she was not alive to be present, later that year her collection "Afterworlds" was awarded the Governor General's Award, making it the second time her work had won such a prestigious honour.
As a child Gwendolyn didn't get the best care from her parents. Her mother was mentally unstable, spending most of her life in institutions and her father was largely an alcoholic. However this may have been what led to her writing being so heavily focused on mythology, dreams, magic, and history. After leaving school Gwendolyn taught herself several different languages including Greek, French, Arabic and Hebrew, which she used to translate many of her poems. Her fluency in several languages is what most likely encouraged her to make references to cultures outside of Canada. Gwendolyn tended to focus on more surreal ideas in her writing and she had her own unique way of expressing them when compared to other poets from her time. A lot of her poetry involved changing the surrealism into reality by using strong imagery and often allegory. The cultures she studied often showed up in her work as part of the overall imagery and allusions to historical events were quite common.
Her volume of poems "The Shadow-Maker" won the Governor General's Award in 1969 and included many poems such as her famous "Dark Pines Under Water". During the mid eighties she was a writer in residence at the University of Western Ontario and then later the University of Toronto. Gwendolyn died in 1987 at the age of 46 from what was believed to have been health problems due to alcohol. Although she was not alive to be present, later that year her collection "Afterworlds" was awarded the Governor General's Award, making it the second time her work had won such a prestigious honour.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 30, 2008
the red bird you wait for is my favourite poem. it's the poem that woke me from decades of sleep.
May 8, 2018
I wanted to like this collection more than I did, because I really enjoyed MacEwen's novel Prince of Egypt, Prince of Dreams and her version of Euripides' Trojan Women, and because she's so famous for her poetry. But for the most part it didn't do much for me, especially the very early works. The problem is that her very early poetry seems to be in that kind of Beat or Expressionist vein of jumbling words and image fragments together almost at random to try and create a sense of subjective emotional experience, which just isn't a poetic style that works for me in most cases. The works here I really liked had more of a plot to them, like the radio play Terror and Erebus, or the Arcana of the Kings poems at the very end of this collection.
https://youtu.be/Rp28MUn3H-o
https://youtu.be/Rp28MUn3H-o
March 8, 2025
No one knows me like you know me Gwen. I would find you in every life. No one gets me like you do.
This entire collection was delicious. Chefs kiss. I will say I loved the entirety of shadow maker more than all of this but it’s still 5 stars for me. Highlights were Helen, Terror and Erebus, the choice, morning laughter, the magician, and tbh everything from the rising fire. I wish you had been happier in your life, but selfishly, I am glad for your art, for it makes me less alone. God I love her.
“I too must clutch the worlds most beautiful and evil rose against my chest and stare,
And cast wild eyes upon this gathering”
“and so we have a choice of several deaths
and that in itself is a consolation.
so go to it love, go to it: the red of the flower your fingers are holding,
the green in the speech of your mouth;
drive it, drive the horse through landscapes
like calendars of cardboard, or nonsense mosaics
for we are great statements in our day
and on the basis of that we can expect small audiences.”
This entire collection was delicious. Chefs kiss. I will say I loved the entirety of shadow maker more than all of this but it’s still 5 stars for me. Highlights were Helen, Terror and Erebus, the choice, morning laughter, the magician, and tbh everything from the rising fire. I wish you had been happier in your life, but selfishly, I am glad for your art, for it makes me less alone. God I love her.
“I too must clutch the worlds most beautiful and evil rose against my chest and stare,
And cast wild eyes upon this gathering”
“and so we have a choice of several deaths
and that in itself is a consolation.
so go to it love, go to it: the red of the flower your fingers are holding,
the green in the speech of your mouth;
drive it, drive the horse through landscapes
like calendars of cardboard, or nonsense mosaics
for we are great statements in our day
and on the basis of that we can expect small audiences.”
January 3, 2016
The Legacy of Gwendolyn MacEwen, Canadian Icon.
Byline: Subterranean Blue Poetry (www.subterraneanbluepoetry.com)
Title of Book: Volume One: The Early Years
Author: Gwendolyn MacEwen
Publisher: Exile Editions
Date of Publication: 1993
Page Count: 175
“Weep you no more, sad fountains;
What need you flow so fast?”
- from Weep you no more, sad fountain by John Dowland
The writing of Gwendolyn MacEwen is iconic, the last breath of Modernism, breathing fire into the renaissance in romance. With striking imagery and lyric language, the Oracle conjures the history of ancient civilizations and the rites of magic in poetic form. The Poet and novelist was born in Toronto, welcomed into the literary community, she left school at the age of 17 to pursue writing. She taught herself languages, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and French and translated writers into English. She was a writer in residence at the University of Western Ontario and University of Toronto and won the Governor General’s Award twice, writing more than 20 books.
This poetry born at the end of the Machine Age into the great awakening of the Peace Movement of the 1960’s, is measured in eloquent language, as if cast into boxes and time, some heroine in a cage in a play. The poetry stands, rings in, a memorial to stone flower monuments in the rain. As if a courtier or princess in an ancient court, the imagery dances with allusions to Greek Mythology, the Ancient Egyptians, the mysteries of the Cabala, entwined with nature imagery, and with the dead beat of the disembodied Industrial society in the background, the poetry begins to round into mythologies.
The series of 9 Arcanum poems writes in the voice of a princess, the politics and intrigues of a court scene, a dowager king, a fall from grace, a prince dies yet is somehow reclaimed at the end of the story, perhaps a reflection of the Artist’s journey.
From the series of 9 Arcanum poems:
Arcanum One: The Prince
“and in the morning the king loved you most
and wrote your name with a sun and a beetle
and a crooked ankh, and in the morning
you wore gold mainly, and the king adorned you
with many more names.
beside fountains, both of you slender
as women, circled and walked together
like sunrays circling water, both of you
slender as women wrote your names with
beetles and with suns, and spoke together
in the golden mornings.
and the king entered your body
into the bracelet of his name
and you became a living syllable
in his golden script, and your body
escaped from me like founting water
all the daylong.
but in the evenings you wrote my name
with a beetle and a moon, and lay upon me
like a long broken necklace which had fallen
from my throat, and the king loved you
most in the morning, and his glamouous love
lay lengthwise along us all the evening.”
The poetry unfolds, as if timeless, as if looking backwards through a glass, defuse with melancholy and mythological archetypes, as if between worlds at the end of time.
Arcanum Nine: The King
“I do not adorn you with any more names
for the living ghost of the king our father
hovers forever above our secret bed
like the royal hawk with wings outspread
on whose head the awful sun burns out
the many generations of our dreams.
and we are the end of his ancient line,
your seed a river of arrested time
whose currents bring the cursed crown
forever back to the foot of this bed –
the double crown of those who wear
the kingdoms of heaven and hell on their head.
the royal bird is blind in morning
and its glamorous wings will shade us
till the end of time. but O my brother
will you wear forever that stolen ring
which wounds your hand by night, and why
in your dreams do you go to the king, the king?”
The poetry, itself, lives in a deconstructed free verse style, and is lyric with occasional rhyme. The poems titles are entirely in capital letters, the poems themselves begin with small letters, there is the occasional period, but sometimes not. Sometimes the poems end suddenly as if jumping into air. It is the beginning of a grand truthtelling and perhaps the beginning of protest and “Apocalypse” poetry. A certain tension in violence, as if in the middle of an underground war.
The Death Agony of the Butterfly
“a monarch beat its velvet brain
against the light, against
the cold light, that’s
what you said.
dance you, dance
you bitch
against the light against
the cold light, that’s
what you said . . . “
and
The Magician: Three Themes
One: The Magician
“odd that the people want to own you
and produce you like a black poodle
at fatal teaparties where their blood crowds
up in the thunder of the afternoon,
inside their houses, in the fatal rooms
of their faith and dark doubting . . . “
As if the haunting, dark with death imagery and majesty these early works could be considered the seeds of the Gothic Revival movement, as the literary world was blooming into Post-Modernism. The writing is often profound and as if written by hand into stone, elegant, of old world mystery, perhaps prophetic, this poetry captivates as classic literature. Volume I: The Early Years of the Collected Works of Gwendolyn MacEwen, available at Amazon.
Available @ Amazon.ca.
Byline: Subterranean Blue Poetry (www.subterraneanbluepoetry.com)
Title of Book: Volume One: The Early Years
Author: Gwendolyn MacEwen
Publisher: Exile Editions
Date of Publication: 1993
Page Count: 175
“Weep you no more, sad fountains;
What need you flow so fast?”
- from Weep you no more, sad fountain by John Dowland
The writing of Gwendolyn MacEwen is iconic, the last breath of Modernism, breathing fire into the renaissance in romance. With striking imagery and lyric language, the Oracle conjures the history of ancient civilizations and the rites of magic in poetic form. The Poet and novelist was born in Toronto, welcomed into the literary community, she left school at the age of 17 to pursue writing. She taught herself languages, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and French and translated writers into English. She was a writer in residence at the University of Western Ontario and University of Toronto and won the Governor General’s Award twice, writing more than 20 books.
This poetry born at the end of the Machine Age into the great awakening of the Peace Movement of the 1960’s, is measured in eloquent language, as if cast into boxes and time, some heroine in a cage in a play. The poetry stands, rings in, a memorial to stone flower monuments in the rain. As if a courtier or princess in an ancient court, the imagery dances with allusions to Greek Mythology, the Ancient Egyptians, the mysteries of the Cabala, entwined with nature imagery, and with the dead beat of the disembodied Industrial society in the background, the poetry begins to round into mythologies.
The series of 9 Arcanum poems writes in the voice of a princess, the politics and intrigues of a court scene, a dowager king, a fall from grace, a prince dies yet is somehow reclaimed at the end of the story, perhaps a reflection of the Artist’s journey.
From the series of 9 Arcanum poems:
Arcanum One: The Prince
“and in the morning the king loved you most
and wrote your name with a sun and a beetle
and a crooked ankh, and in the morning
you wore gold mainly, and the king adorned you
with many more names.
beside fountains, both of you slender
as women, circled and walked together
like sunrays circling water, both of you
slender as women wrote your names with
beetles and with suns, and spoke together
in the golden mornings.
and the king entered your body
into the bracelet of his name
and you became a living syllable
in his golden script, and your body
escaped from me like founting water
all the daylong.
but in the evenings you wrote my name
with a beetle and a moon, and lay upon me
like a long broken necklace which had fallen
from my throat, and the king loved you
most in the morning, and his glamouous love
lay lengthwise along us all the evening.”
The poetry unfolds, as if timeless, as if looking backwards through a glass, defuse with melancholy and mythological archetypes, as if between worlds at the end of time.
Arcanum Nine: The King
“I do not adorn you with any more names
for the living ghost of the king our father
hovers forever above our secret bed
like the royal hawk with wings outspread
on whose head the awful sun burns out
the many generations of our dreams.
and we are the end of his ancient line,
your seed a river of arrested time
whose currents bring the cursed crown
forever back to the foot of this bed –
the double crown of those who wear
the kingdoms of heaven and hell on their head.
the royal bird is blind in morning
and its glamorous wings will shade us
till the end of time. but O my brother
will you wear forever that stolen ring
which wounds your hand by night, and why
in your dreams do you go to the king, the king?”
The poetry, itself, lives in a deconstructed free verse style, and is lyric with occasional rhyme. The poems titles are entirely in capital letters, the poems themselves begin with small letters, there is the occasional period, but sometimes not. Sometimes the poems end suddenly as if jumping into air. It is the beginning of a grand truthtelling and perhaps the beginning of protest and “Apocalypse” poetry. A certain tension in violence, as if in the middle of an underground war.
The Death Agony of the Butterfly
“a monarch beat its velvet brain
against the light, against
the cold light, that’s
what you said.
dance you, dance
you bitch
against the light against
the cold light, that’s
what you said . . . “
and
The Magician: Three Themes
One: The Magician
“odd that the people want to own you
and produce you like a black poodle
at fatal teaparties where their blood crowds
up in the thunder of the afternoon,
inside their houses, in the fatal rooms
of their faith and dark doubting . . . “
As if the haunting, dark with death imagery and majesty these early works could be considered the seeds of the Gothic Revival movement, as the literary world was blooming into Post-Modernism. The writing is often profound and as if written by hand into stone, elegant, of old world mystery, perhaps prophetic, this poetry captivates as classic literature. Volume I: The Early Years of the Collected Works of Gwendolyn MacEwen, available at Amazon.
Available @ Amazon.ca.
January 17, 2016
I was digging it and then I read "You Cannot Do This," which felt like...outrage at the mistreatment of the very very rich? And maybe it's my borderline personality disorder talking but that kinda turned her sour for me and I waded through the rest quite slowly. There was too much royalty and too little directness for my taste, overall.
Highlights: "The Dimensions of a Tiger," which is, in my opinion, about severe social anxiety; "Dark Pines Under Water," which feels like a conscious/subconscious slip; "Jewellery," which has some interesting gender & power imagery in it.
Highlights: "The Dimensions of a Tiger," which is, in my opinion, about severe social anxiety; "Dark Pines Under Water," which feels like a conscious/subconscious slip; "Jewellery," which has some interesting gender & power imagery in it.
December 21, 2019
I really loved reading those poems. All of them gave me multiple perspectives.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews