Canadian Poetry 1920 to 1960

by Brian Trehearne (Compiler)

The best in four decades of exceptional Canadian poetry, now in a limited hardcover edition.

The poets in this anthology, all of whom matured creatively between 1920 and 1960, considered it one of their primary obligations to modernize Canadian writing, to bring the country's poetry out of late Romantic stasis after the Great War into a fertile and combative response to the cultural, political, technological, philosophical, religious, and economic conditions of the modern era. In their common reaction against Romanticism, and in their commitments to modern poetry's possibilities of profound newness, the poets in this volume make up one great movement in Canada's cultural history. The anthology

• 250 poems by 44 poets
• Regionally diverse voices from Newfoundland, the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies, and B.C.
• Extensive selections of the work of major poets
• An afterword and biographical headnotes provide important historical and literary context

The poets included in Canadian Poetry from 1920 to 1960
Frank Oliver Call; Louise Morey Bowman; Raymond Knister; Joe Wallace; E.J. Pratt; W.W. E. Ross; F.R. Scott; A.J.M. Smith; Charles Bruce; Earle Birney; A.M. Klein; Dorothy Livesay; Leo Kennedy; Audrey Alexandra Brown; Kenneth Leslie; Robert Finch; Floris Clark McLaren; L.A. Mackay; Anne Marriott; Bertram Warr; Patrick Anderson; P.K. Page; Kay Smith; Miriam Waddington; Margaret Avison; A.G. Bailey; Louis Dudek; John Glassco; Ralph Gustafson; Raymond Souster; Irving Layton; Roy Daniells; Douglas LePan; George Whalley; James Reaney; Elizabeth Brewster; George Johnston; Goodridge MacDonald; Jay MacPherson; Anne Wilkinson; Phyllis Webb; Wilfred Watson; R.A.D. Ford; Eldon Grier.

Genres: Poetry

488 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

BRIAN TREHEARNE is a Professor of Canadian literature at McGill University. He is the author of Aestheticism and the Canadian Modernists: Aspects of a Poetic Influence (1989) and The Montreal Forties: Modernist Poetry in Transition (1999). He has edited Irving Layton’s Fornalutx: Selected Poems, 1928-1990 (1992), The Complete Poems of A.J.M. Smith (2007), The Complete Poems of John Glassco (2018), and the anthology Canadian Poetry 1920 to 1960 (2010). He is currently writing on the poetry, songs, and fiction of Leonard Cohen, whose works he has taught at McGill for over twenty years.

Reviews

[Kanwarpal Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The anthology contain 250 poems by 44 various poets all belong to Canadian region and from all over Canada there voices highlights from Newfoundland, the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies, and British Columbia with Extensive selections of the work of major poets and from time line of 1920-1960. It is considered to be one of their primary obligations to modernize Canadian writing, to bring the country's poetry out of late Romantic stasis after the Great War into a fertile and combative response to the cultural, political, technological, philosophical, religious, and economic conditions of the modern era with profound newness, the poets in this volume make up one great movement in Canada's cultural history

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate to admit it but I found myself more interested in the biographies than the poems a lot of the time. Still, it's an neat collection.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully curated - as far as Canadian poetry anthologies go, this is one of the best.