Selected poems / E. J. Pratt ; edited by Sandra Djwa, W.J. Keith and Zailig Pollock.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This volume of E.J. Pratt's selected poems introduces Pratt's poems to the college and university student, to provide the kind of information needed for an informed reading of the poems. The volume offers a full sampling of Pratt's poems chosen on the joint basis of representativeness and intrinsic value.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Pratt is the traditional starting point for modern Canadian poetry. Canada had numerous poets before him, but Pratt's poems about a century when "New life ... leapt among the dials" became a signpost for locating the separation of Canadian poetry from English writing. Readers can follow this book's cairn of 27 selected poems and discover the milieu of Robertson Davies, Margaret Atwood, and Northrop Frye and discern the emerging shape of intellectual life in the 20th century everywhere, not just in Canada or Pratt's Newfoundland birthplace. The latest poetic map of the winds and drifts after WW I, this collection is accompanied by a fine introduction, a few notes, a two-page bibliography, and a chronology. The present volume works well, but to fully situate the book's selections, readers should explore the cornerstone of Pratt studies, David Pitt's two-volume biography E.J. Pratt, the Truant Years, 1882-1927 (CH, Feb'85) and E.J. Pratt, the Master Years, 1927-1964 (CH, Sep'88); E.J. Pratt: Complete Poems, ed. by Djwa and Gordon Moyles (CH, Sep'89); volumes of Pratt's prose, poems, and correspondence; and The Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt at . Recommended for all poetry collections, but especially undergraduate and public collections supporting the humanities in Canada and the Commonwealth. R. H. Solomon; formerly, University of Alberta