Director's Cut - Softcover

Solway, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889842728 ISBN 13: 9780889842724

Publisher: Porcupine's Quill Inc.,Canada, 2003

Synopsis

Argues that the time has arrived to take stock and engage passionately with our literature, and especially our poetry, if it is ever to be rescued from the swamp of second-ratedness into which it has descended. The author contends that almost all of the poetry being written in Canada these days is turgid, spurious and pedestrian.

About this title

Review

Director's Cut is a brilliant yet decidedly independent Canadian poet's report on the state of Canadian poetry, and the news (inevitably) is not good. It consists, for the most part, of articles and reviews collected from newspapers and magazines, and the impact they make when gathered together is devastating. Solway insists, in his own phrase, not so much that the emperor has no clothes as that the emperor doesn't even exist. He offers weighty evidence of "the banalization of the craft" and quotes numerous examples of "all the drivel and gloop one has to contend with in the poetry of this country." -- W J Keith "Canadian Book Review"

"Director's Cut" is a brilliant yet decidedly independent Canadian poet's report on the state of Canadian poetry, and the news (inevitably) is not good. It consists, for the most part, of articles and reviews collected from newspapers and magazines, and the impact they make when gathered together is devastating. Solway insists, in his own phrase, not so much that the emperor has no clothes as that the emperor doesn't even exist. He offers weighty evidence of the banalization of the craft'' and quotes numerous examples of all the drivel and gloop one has to contend with in the poetry of this country.'''

'"Director's Cut" is a brilliant yet decidedly independent Canadian poet's report on the state of Canadian poetry, and the news (inevitably) is not good. It consists, for the most part, of articles and reviews collected from newspapers and magazines, and the impact they make when gathered together is devastating. Solway insists, in his own phrase, not so much that the emperor has no clothes as that the emperor doesn't even exist. He offers weighty evidence of ''the banalization of the craft'' and quotes numerous examples of ''all the drivel and gloop one has to contend with in the poetry of this country.'''

"Director's Cut" is a brilliant yet decidedly independent Canadian poet's report on the state of Canadian poetry, and the news (inevitably) is not good. It consists, for the most part, of articles and reviews collected from newspapers and magazines, and the impact they make when gathered together is devastating. Solway insists, in his own phrase, not so much that the emperor has no clothes as that the emperor doesn't even exist. He offers weighty evidence of the banalization of the craft'' and quotes numerous examples of all the drivel and gloop one has to contend with in the poetry of this country.'' '--W J Keith "Canadian Book Review Annual "

Solway reminds me of the kind of character you used to find on Saturday afternoons in the corner of men's rooms in the days when taverns in Canada were segregated along gender lines. If you're old enough, and frequented such places, you'll remember the type: belligerent, bellicose, pugnacious, continually quarreling with anyone who happens within shouting distance of his table.'--Robert Reid "Kitchener Waterloo Record "

The polysyllabic Solway specializes in floccinaucinihilipilification, which, as you know, is the practice or habit of estimating something as worthless. He proposes that good poets must have substance, structure their work in cadence, metaphor and overall design, '' and ground perceptions in vivid and memorable language.'' Failing the test are Canadian plebs, '' stuttering recorders of the mundane, and cabbalists, '' language-fixated doodlers. He likes Irving Layton, Charles Bruce, Milton Acorn and the early Louis Dudek. Peter Van Toorn, on the strength of his 1984 collection "Mountain Tea" is the most unjustly neglected poet of our time.'' In a long concluding section, he compares such matching incongruities'' as the bad Jan Zwicky, George Elliott Clarke, Fred Wah and Christian B?k -- as well as the negative exemplars Purdy, Ondaatje, Atwood and Carson -- to the good Carmine Starnino, Eric Ormsby, Robyn Sarah, Norm Sibum, Michael Harris, Ricardo Sternberg and Mary Dalton. Sometimes these mix-and-matches make sense; other times, they rely on Solway's personal taste -- or whom he has coffee with.'--Fraser Sutherland "Globe & Mail "

There's something terribly poignant about a minor poet like David Solway lashing out in the nastiest way about other Canadian writers who have somehow, inexplicably, achieved international celebrity without his permission. ... Solway's inflated opinion of himself coupled with his hypercritical attitude toward most of his colleagues lays a sad tarnish on the otherwise sparkling and accomplished prose in his new collection of literary essays titled "Director's Cut".'--Pat Donnelly "The Montreal Gazette "

Synopsis

Solway argues in this feisty and polemical book that the time has arrived to take stock and engage passionately with our literature, and especially our poetry, if it is ever to be rescued from the swamp of second-ratedness into which it has descended. He contends that almost all of the poetry (and much of the fiction) being written in Canada these days is turgid, spurious and pedestrian, the result of two highly questionable developments: the proliferation of Creative Writing departments in universities throughout the country, and a largely subsidized literature industry, abetted by a press of cousinly critics and reviewers, intended to construct a patchwork national psyche, create a sense of ideological cohesion and glorify the tribe. In consequence of this, we have sponsored a coterie of underachieving overproducers and proceeded to collude in their diffusion by virtue of our silent complicity or our chauvinism. Solway believes that we are on the whole far too nice, far too politically correct and, in a word, far too 'Canadian', to register our disapproval bluntly and agonistically. The last thing we want to do is offend anyone. But all that such manoeuvres ensure is that nothing changes while conscience is appeased. There comes a time when diffidence and affability, those specifically Canadian virtues, work against our best interests and prevent the candid and occasionally brutal assessments without which the critical stupor and aesthetic fog so congenial to us must remain destructively in place. In Director's Cut,Solway attempts to dispel that fog, to see clearly and to speak directly to a readership that has been far too receptive of questionable work.

About this edition

• Publisher: Porcupine's Quill Inc.,Canada
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0889842728
• ISBN 13: 9780889842724
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216