THE ESSENTIAL P.K. PAGE, a slimly winnowed collection of poems, is the second in a series aiming:

…to provide the best possible introduction to a preeminent Canadian poet, by selecting key poems that carry the essence of an individual poetic voice and sensibility …

Page has been part of Canada’s poetic landscape since emerging in the 1944 anthology Unit of Five where she is linked, historically, to Louis Dudek, Raymond Souster, and others. In a 1945 review of Unit of Five, Northrop Frye uses the phrases “metallic glitter” and “imaginative wisecracks” to describe Page’s poems. She has, throughout her writing career, held fast to her poetics. The two-couplet “Intraocular Lens Model 103G,” certainly not about cataract surgery, is typical.

This lens I look through is as clear as glass.
It shows me all I saw before was false.

If what was true is true no longer, how
now can I know the false true from true true?

Those who enjoy “glitter” in poetry will appreciate the diction, imagery, and acoustics of Page’s phrasings, as in “Evening Dance of the Grey Flies.”

Grey flies, fragile, slender-winged and slender-legged
scribble a pencilled script across the sunlit lawn.

As grass and leaves grow black
the grey flies gleam –
their cursive flight a gold calligraphy.

The Essential P.K. Page is intended for readers, not scholars, and will satisfy those who wish only a glimpse of this Canadian poet.

As for new work, poetry lovers cannot read everything coming out each year in literary magazines. But finally, Canadian readers can look at our own literature through a Best of lens.

Although only thirty-seven magazines submitted their 2007 issues (several are conspicuously absent — The Dalhousie Review and Geist, for example), Stephanie Bolster, the inaugural guest editor was able to generate a 100-poem long list, with fifty in the book.

The resulting volume means those of us who are not frequent flyers can enjoy Méira Cook’s “A Walker in the City” by turning real pages rather than clicking on the En Route web site. For those who don’t get The Malahat Review, Bolster has selected Aurian Haller’s “Song of the Taxidermist,” which won Malahat’s long poem contest and the 2007 National Magazine Award.

There are quieter poems, like Dani Couture’s “Union Station” in which “[t]he shoulder knows the will of the heart and its way around/ a crowd. The clam-soft give. The crack of the shell.” There is the exhausting muscularity of Carmine Starnino’s “Squash Rackets”, “for they are always spotting something up-range,/ chasing the acrobounding prey until it’s end-stopped by fatigue”. Susan Elmslie’s “Box” offers understated horror. Craig Poile’s “The Blanket”is a love poem, with humour — “[b]ought from (and possibly made of) Canadian Tire[.]”

I’m most grateful for Yvonne Blomer’s “The Roll Call to the Ark”, with its invitation to multiple readings:

Bolster describes her choices as poems “that felt…necessary[.]” Lovers of poetry should buy this volume: read some good poems, and encourage the future of this series.

Maxianne Berger’s latest poetry collection is Dismantled Secrets (Wolsak and Wynn, 2008).