Author Description

This is a teaching anthology arranged chronologically and concentrating on major poets, with a more selective treatment of significant minor writers. Intended for both survey and genre courses in poetry, it provides the basic texts for the study of a poet's work in some depth and establishes maximum interrelations among poems, poets and periods so that it can be used to show changes in genre and mode, as well as historical and literary influences. The anthology presents the key poems for understanding our poetic tradition. Selection is based on the excellence of the poems themselves along with the following considerations: how well they reflect their period, show the development of a genre or mode, illustrate the best aspects of the individual poet's craft, and speak to the twentieth-century sensibility. As a general principle, but not a rigorous one, all selections are complete works. This differs from competing anthologies in providing a liberal selection of Canadian poetry. In addition to headnotes for each poet, the anthology includes a comprehensive fifty-page essay on versification and prosody and an author/title index.