Poetry
Laconics
W. W. E. Ross · 1930
Synopsis
Very short poems in unrhymed two-stress lines, which their author called laconics: a form he wanted to be proper to the country without being free verse. The collection opens with the sequence North, written almost entirely in one night in 1928 after a discussion among friends about Canadian nationalism, and drawing on two summers of surveying in northern Ontario: a fish in the water, a diver, dawn and birds. Other sections follow.
Context
The book appeared in Ottawa in 1930, from Overbrook Press, at the author's own expense and under the initials E. R. alone. Its author had perfected five years earlier this short form that he called the laconic, and pieces from the Northern sequence had appeared in Poetry, Harriet Monroe's magazine, and in The Dial. The volume received little critical attention; a collection of sonnets followed in 1932. Raymond Souster brought together a selection of his poems in 1956, then a larger one in 1968.
Who it is for
A short collection, with poems of a few lines, without rhyme or fixed metre, in a simple, concrete language.
Prizes and reception
Little noticed when it appeared, despite a review by Marianne Moore; its author is regarded today as Canada's first Imagist poet.
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