\s mYevtew ELECTRONIC ADDITION - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWclear testing, though the role of the IQtest is not clear. An excessive didacticismmars some of the poems. Eady's "MooseRestoration" is less effective than W. S.Merwin's "Unchopping a Tree," a prosepoem that uses the same device: ecologicalwaste is satirized by giving elaborateinstructions for restoring what has beenirreparably lost. But Eady draws out hismoral much more than Merwin does.Sometimes Eady reflects another directionin the prose poem tradition, a lovingattention to detail that I find moreconvincing than the use of surrealism.Poems like "Mclntosh Apples" and "TheFlorida Orange" are sharp and evocativeat the same time. Eady's skill with wordsis impressive.Michael Bullock's The Man WithFlowers Through His Hands, a collectionof fables in prose poem form, also suffersfrom predictable surrealist techniques,especially bizarre transformations. Aplough turns into a ship, a detachedhand goes searching for another hand, acushion flies through the night lookingfor a chair, a man with burning hairturns to powder when he is doused(never fear: he comes back to life).There is something arbitrary here. Thesepoems are meant to be vehicles for theimagination but they resemble NationalFilm Board animated shorts. Many ofthe fables are about the act of writing,others convey a vague metaphysicalanxiety. The cumulative effect is numbingrather than quickening, in spite ofBullock's excellent prose style.These books show what Dennis Leewould call the eclecticism of recentCanadian poetry. Writers draw freely onEuropean surrealism, Russian Futurism,Canadian social history, accounts of terrorism.There is no dominant ism, schoolor leading figure. We have some trendsbut no strong movements. Joe DavidBellamy's excellent collection of interviewswith twenty-six leading Americanpoets, American Poetry Observed, showsthat the situation is not unique to Canada.There were two strong movementsin American poetry since i960, "confessional"poetry and surrealism. The confessionalapproach has been absorbedinto the mainstream. Surrealism was beginningto bore some writers in the1970's, judging from several of the interviews.Donald Justice was complainingabout vague mysticism and cloying inwardnessin the surreal school back in1975. I was surprised to read condemnationsof "light verse surrealism" in RobertBly — the man is disowning his progeny.And Marvin Bell objects to the"frivolous associationalism" of muchAmerican surreal verse. The finest surrealwriting aims at profound revelationsabout the unconscious or the nature ofreality. Too easily the surreal methodcan turn into a mannerism.Bellamy has gathered his interviewsfrom many sources. The quality is high,though not generally up to the classics ofthe genre (and it has become a genre)published in Paris Review and New YorkQuarterly. Canadian writing would benefitif a literary magazine were to undertakea series of first-rate, craft-centredinterviews. Good interviews are conductedof course, but too many aregossipy or reveal little preparation by theinterviewer and subject.BERT ALM ON179