Poetry
The Ill-Tempered Lover and Other Poems
L. A. MacKay · 1948
Synopsis
A slim collection, mostly satirical. It reprints pieces published in the Canadian Forum, several of them about the Spanish Civil War: a battle hymn first addressed to the Spanish rebels, which becomes in the book the hymn of the Spanish rebellion, a dialogue of the dead and a canticle dated 1938, a piece titled This Is No Crusade. The title, that of an ill-tempered lover, announces another side of the book, a romantic one.
Context
Its author's second collection, after a first one published under a pseudonym in 1938, published in Toronto by Macmillan in 1948, the same year as his scholarly book on the anger of Homer and the year he left Vancouver for Berkeley. The volume, of seventy-two pages, gathers pieces from the thirties, signed in the magazine sometimes with the pseudonym, sometimes with the author's initials.
Who it is for
A very short collection, in a tight and ironic language; the satires assume some knowledge of the Spanish conflict of 1936.
Prizes and reception
His battle hymn about Spain was reprinted in eight Canadian anthologies, from 1957 to 1995.
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