I’m not reviewing this book so that you can go read it. I got mine from the library discard rack and I’m guessing it’s wildly out of print. I’m reviewing it so that you can find out what it says.
Canadian literature skipped directly from a Victorian mode into Postmodernism, although a lot of what we were calling Postmodernism was actually Modernism. (I can attest that there are literary magazines in Canada today whose rejection letters more or less quote directly from Ezra Pound’s Imagist principles, specifically #2: “To use no word that did not contribute to the presentation.”)
Small-circulation literary journals exist to present an idiosyncratic, editor-driven counterpoint to mainstream currents of thought and taste, but “in Canada there was relatively little of an intellectual majority to rebel against,” which delayed the emergence of “the little magazine” in this country relative to the US and Europe.
Contemporary Verse, while not the first Canadian literary journal, was prominent in the 1940s. It was aligned to no set school or aesthetic but did publish a lot of “social realist” poetry. Others from that era include Preview, First Statement, and Direction.
Magazines are founded specifically to have arguments with other magazines. This is invigorating. Also, it sounds like nearly everyone had a beef with the Canadian Authors Association. In fact, one gets the impression that Canadian poetry consists entirely of railing against Canadian poetry. “[A] poet in Canada is forced to write in maple syrup on birch bark,” complains Aileen Collins in the journal CIV/n as quoted by Norris, “(which will ensure his being included in any later anthologies edited by Birney, probably under the classification “Natural Resources”).”
Canadian poetry “exploded” in the 1960s (in a good way). Contributing factors here include new printing technologies and the Canada Council.
Northrop Frye—kind of a big deal. The magazine Alphabet took a mythopoetic stance in contrast to the earlier realist strain. This magazine presented more concrete and experimental poetry, and opened towards pop culture.
Tish—important innovation, or “betrayal of Canadian literature”? (See Black Mountain, Beats, New York School). Vancouver poetry is or was distinct from all other Canadian poetry. But maybe not from American poetry.
bill bissett and friends started Blew Ointment in 1963 because they couldn’t get their visual and sound poetry published in existing outlets, and BpNichol started Ganglia in 1965 to publish bissett and friends in Toronto. Ganglia lasted about a year and was succeeded by GrOnk.
Enfin, we arrive at Montréal! Yes, there has been poetry in French—probably this entire time? But we’re not going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about Leonard Cohen. Also Irving Layton and Louis Dudek. And Al Purdy, who was there for a bit. Magazines popped into existence and disappeared like bubbles in the bath. Mid-70s Montréal poetry was catalyzed by reading series at the Vehicule Gallery, which led to some anthologies, which led to some of these poets starting their own little magazines, with fantastic names like Mouse Eggs and Hh.
The last chapter brings us to two magazines that still exist today: The Capilano Review (“Perhaps the finest, certainly the most elegantly produced, periodical attached to a college community …”) and Contemporary Verse 2 (“The most ambitious eclectic magazine of the late seventies …”).
Whew! It would be lovely to see a similar accounting of the last 45 years, covering the zine era and the overwhelming onlineness of the present day. Maybe there is one? Could be someone’s Masters thesis?
Apologies for any misunderstandings of the material, or misrepresentations of the scene. Any such errors are mine. I wasn’t there at the time, and I’m barely around even now. Seems like it was quite a blast.