Writing in Our Time: Canada's Radical Poetries in English (1957-2003) [Paperback]

WRITING IN OUR TIME would be valuable even if it only contained Pauline Butling's reflections on her own life, during which she discovers that the mask of community may hide deeper shadows and indeed, mirror the power dynamics of the very structures that the community has been resisting. It's so cleverly and devastatingly done. First, Butling describes her memories from the perspective of "I," a satisfying trip through the early days of UBC poetry world of Vancouver in the early 1960s, in which she met Fred Wah, hung around with the "Tish" poets, participated in the 1963 Vancouver Conference with Creeley, Olson, Ginsberg, then went to Buffalo with Wah, studied there, became a feminist, organized and worked on more conferences, developed her own voice and presence, all seems well from Butling's point of view. But when she turns to the third person, and looks back to find out how little she has been represented by history, even in histories of (say) the Tish poets or the Vancouver conference, scenes in which she played an integral part, she begins to wonder, as she imagines others surveying such histories and noting her name with a question mark--"Who is She?" She is merciless on herself in a way I could never be. But she makes you feel that, she had to be, in order to bring to light something integral to community that may indeed work not only against the individual talent but against its own best interests. Power dynamics are always in place and the savvy and the lucky take advantage of them. That's part of the lesson, but happily not all.

The two authors are of different generations, and Rudy doesn't have quite the talent for writing that Butling does. She is a tad more scholarly, but tries to hide it. The tension between two writing styles, always a striking fact (sometimes the only important fact) in collaboration, is here quite marked, and sometimes we get the feeling that the authors are rubbing sticks together and no fire comes up. As in their other book, they spend too much time talking about the achievement of their hero, Robert Kroetsch, and they are inadvertently comical when they tiptoe around Fred Wah trying to seem impartial which is nutty since one of them is married to him. Both authors write provocatively, almost amorously, and you will be enthralled by their individual judgments and insights. I wish I had more time to write about this book chapter by chapter, for it deserves much analysis, but I must get my medicine now and answer the doorbell. I will say that it was a brilliant stroke incorporating, into a sometimes diffuse historial picture, a series of chronologies; these datelines steady and scintillate at the same time. Won't somebody (or a team) write a similar history of US "radical poetries" for the same period?

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