Review of 'Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems' ed. Nancy Holmes, intro. Don McKay, Waterloo, Ontario, Wilfred Laurier Press, 2009.

Abstract

This anthology constitutes the first historic survey of Canadian nature poetry. It offers an index to over two hundred years of the country's literature, from the domestic to the wild, and from conservative sentimental and pietistic verse to the archaeology of the real by newer voices. There is a diverse range of approaches to nature on hand here. Most intriguing to a Western European audience, perhaps, is the re-fashioning of the rural-urban interface via the fusion of natural history observation, a liberated post-colonial framework and ecological intelligence. But what exactly is being offered here, in this combination of traditional verse and more radical ecopoetics?