Carmine Starnino

This anthology features two to five poems from each of fifty Canadian poets born between 1955 - 1975 (yes, my first thought was, ‘well, no Margaret Atwood then’). The editor’s criteria for this “new canon” in short is: poets of a certain age and, in her own words, “…for now let’s just say {the anthology} gathers together, within its limits of inclusion, the most aurally ambitious, lexically alert, and formally intelligent poems, I could find.”

That said, I note that the poets chosen are two to one, male/female and there is little said by way of biographical material. There are no poems in translation as far as I could tell and the reader would have to look for inferences in the poetry itself to speculate whether the poet might be a something other than white; of course one could Google a name, too. Is this important? We could discuss this at length, couldn’t we? The gender imbalance did rather irk me as I just assumed an anthology published in 2005 would be more gender equal; and I missed the broader cultural offerings that I had enjoyed in the newer Canadian anthology I read previously to this. That all said, the anthology contain some excellent poetry. (this review was first posted in the group "Club Read 2012 on my reading thread and the post included three short poems from the anthology -- LA)… (more)