Description

Selected and arranged an with an introduction by F.R.Scott & A.J.M.Smith. Here's a bomb to blast complacency, a wind to scatter the cobwebs of old conformities; a whip for knaves-in-office and a purge for hypocrites.Here's medicine for the strong and poison for the dull. Here's a rope to hang the canting chauvinist and a sword to arm the man who loves his country. The Blasted Pine shows Canada in an unfamiliar light - the light of an energetic and sometimes savage self-criticism. The stately pine .is here blasted and eaten away by the native fires of satire and invective. But though the light is unfamiliar it has burnt steadily since the mid-nineteenth century century. Almost as soon as Canadian poets appeared they were sounding a disrespectful note - a loud raspberry which echoes rudely down the corridors of history to our own day. This anthology reveals, as no other has done, how consistently and with what ferocity Canadian poets have attacked Canadian institutions. Like the pioneers who swung their axes to clear away the bush, that the land might be tilled and yield crops, these poets prepare the ground for civilization. When Samuel Butler (an English visitor) raged against the indifference to beauty which could consign the Discobolus to an attic ("O God, O Montreal") he was affirming the worth of the beauty. And when Canadian poets of our own time (including the distinguished editors of this anthology) jeer at and mock and deride the false standards of the contemporary Establishment they are implying other and higher standards. All satire is moral - even, by a paradox, when it attacks morals.168p. notes index. Slight scuffing to paper wraps