bury me deep in the green wood
rob mclennan
ECW,
1999.
In his 1998 book of essays Body
Music, Dennis Lee wrote of Al
Purdy, the granddaddy of the Canadian poetry scene: "[Purdy is] among
the slowest developers in the history of poetry". Of course, Purdy didn't
have Purdy to help him along. Such is the joy of life in the 1990s, where
Canadian poets seem to age quicker, assisted as they have been by the
previous waves of versifiers.
Which brings us to rob mclennan, recent
winner of the Air Canada Award for most promising Canadian writer under
30 (the only non-cash award administered by the Canadian
Authors Association). bury me deep is mclennan's second book-packaged
collection (chapbooks and anthology contributions not included), though it not his only release of the year (new mclennan titles
are also appearing in 1999 from Broken
Jaw Press and Talon
Books).
Someday – let's not say soon [he did: spring 2000 -
ed.] – Purdy will give up the ghost.
Southeastern Ontario (home territory to mclennan and Purdy) has a worthy
inheritor in mclennan, who despite his relative youth is already functioning
well above par.
In Body Music, Lee writes of Purdy's "polyphony";
that is, his ability to mix different voices and jump with the silent
ease of icebergs through the vast geological time and space that is Canada.
Polyphony works to describe mclennan's poems, too. They are interior and
exterior, grounded in the world of objects and in the world of the imagination.
They are mature, big-hearted poems full of real feeling, humour, little
bits of fairy dust and a dash of that ingredient that will make some of
Purdy's poems last forever -- a wink and a nudge at the wonder of it all.
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