Poetry
Overture
F. R. Scott · 1945
Synopsis
The first book of verse by a McGill jurist. Satire leads the way: a gathering of Canadian authors in which sixty-year-old virgins still write about passion, in which the elders are saluted for their zeal towards God and the King, and in which the names of Carman, Lampman, Roberts, Campbell and Scott parade past. Politics follows, with a poem on the Spain of 1937; other pieces take the country itself as their subject.
Context
The author had nearly twenty years of poems behind him when this first book appeared in Toronto with Ryerson in 1945. The satire of the authors' meeting had first appeared in the McGill Fortnightly Review, in the mid-twenties, and A. J. M. Smith considered it a satire that had become a classic. A villanelle from the collection was spoken by Leonard Cohen to jazz music, on a 2004 record.
Who it is for
A short collection, in a spoken language and free of obscurity; the satire assumes some familiarity with English Canada between the wars.
Prizes and reception
First book by one of the main architects of modern poetry in Canada, active from the McGill student magazines onwards and then in the Preview group.
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