Poetry
David and Other Poems
Earle Birney · 1942
Synopsis
One summer, in the Rockies near Banff, the narrator and his friend David clear trails for a survey crew and spend their weekends on the peaks. David, the better climber, teaches him the rock and how to read the fossil corals and trilobites in the limestone. From one climb to the next, they talk about the Finger, a hooked spire in the Sawback range. After a first failure at its base, they set out again on a September afternoon for their last mountain. Shorter pieces follow.
Context
His first book, published in Toronto by Ryerson in 1942, the year he entered active service; the title piece, a narrative in quatrains, had appeared the previous year in the Canadian Forum. The poem was long on the syllabus of schools in English Canada, and persistent rumours, which Dorothy Livesay relayed, took it to be autobiographical. The Finger, the needle of the poem, is a real peak, first climbed in 1935.
Who it is for
A short collection; the main piece can be read in one sitting, and the vocabulary of climbing is the only obstacle.
Prizes and reception
Governor General's Award for poetry for 1942; the author received the second of his two awards in 1945.
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