Over the course of a career spanning five decades, Canadian poet, novelist and playwright Earle Birney produced some of Canada’s best-known poems. The Essential Earle Birney contains a selection of his pivotal works, including early break-out successes; nuanced, mid-career lyrics; avant-garde experiments; and beautiful, deceptively simple love poetry. From ‘David’ to ‘Bushed’ to ‘Anglo-Saxon Street’, this indispensable collection reaffirms Birney’s position as a key figure in modern Canadian poetry. The Essential Poets Series presents the works of Canada’s most celebrated poets in a package that is beautiful, accessible, and affordable. The Essential Earle Birney is the 10th volume in the series.
Tell me, how do I write better poetry? You can't? I'm not surprised. You can write it yourself but damned if you can tell someone else how, your classes to the contrary. —Al Purdy The truth is none of us who write poetry should allow ourselves to make public critiques of the others, not in a small country like this where we know each other too well. —Earle Birney This collection of letters illustrates the long friendship between two of Canada's most highly regarded poets, Earle Birney and Al Purdy. Beginning with Purdy's lauding of, and jabbing at, a poet he admired but had never met, it captures the changing relationship between the writers, each of whom was fiercely committed to the other's work. The letters are full of mutual praise and stern criticism, as Purdy and Birney, relentless in their pursuit of poetic success, look to each other for advice and share their many dissatisfactions with the literary life. We Go Far Back in Time is an intimate look into the lives of two great poets who found common ground in their writing and in the changing fortunes of their literary careers.
Private Thomas Leadbeater Turvey is nobody’s idea of a capable recruit. Shifted from regimental pillar to post, Turvey tries and fails at every odd job in the army with a remarkable genius for mishap. A casualty before he has a chance to see action, Turvey watches the maimed and dying return from the front; thus Earle Birney’s comic masterpiece becomes an unforgettable indictment of war. Turvey won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour in 1949.
These essays, written between 1937 and 1960, have remained classics of their kind. They include important discussions on irony—its native traditions and its occurrence in early English literature, an account of critics’ appreciation of Chaucerian irony prior to this century, and a detailed examination of four of the Canterbury Tales. The illuminating analysis of the complex use of various kinds of irony in the Miller’s Tale, the Friar’s Tale, the Summoner’s Tale, and the Manciple’s Tale emphasizes aspects of Chaucer’s art that are very acceptable to contemporary. As a result, these essays lead today’s reader towards a fuller understanding of Chaucer’s achievement.
Earle Birney (1904-1995), the father of modern Canadian poetry, was one of Canada's finest writers and the author of "David," arguably the most popular Canadian poem of all time. One Muddy Hand: Selected Poems features Birney's best work, spanning his entire writing career from 1926 to 1987. Born in Calgary, Birney grew up in different parts of Alberta before his family settled in Banff. In 1922 he enrolled at the University of British Columbia, where he received his BA in English. He earned his MA and PhD from the University of Toronto and also studied at Berkeley and the University of London. Birney's first and second volumes of poetry, David and Other Poems, and Now is Time, both won the Governor General's Award. In addition to publishing over twenty collections of poems over his lifetime, he published two novels, including Turvey--which won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 1949--several plays, three books of criticism and a memoir. Birney was a noted teacher of creative writing and literature, known for inspiring a generation of students to become writers, educators and scholars. He had a distinguished career at UBC, where he founded Canada's first creative writing department in 1963, and he was University of Toronto's first writer-in-residence in 1965. Using Birney's Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems as a guide, editor Sam Solecki chose the remainder of the poems. Here are Birney's most-loved poems, such as "David," "Bushed," "A walk in Kyoto," "The bear on the Delhi road," "El Greco: Espolio" and "For Wailan," a sequence of love poems that are among the best in the Canadian canon. The only Birney book of poems currently available, One Muddy Hand brings a canonical author's poetry back into print and will be an important addition to bookshelves everywhere.
Conversations with Trotsky provides a unique insight into Canadian Trotskyism during the Radical 1930s through an original collection of Birney's work.
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