Contents

Introduction

Part I: 1960-1971

  1. Some Sun for this Winter

  2. Narcissus: Double Entendre

  3. Apocalyptic Squawk from a Splendid Auk

  4. Kangaroo and Beaver: Tradition in Exile by J. P. Matthews

  5. F. D. Reeve: Aleksandr Blok

  6. Superwoman Drawn and Quartered: The Early Forms of She

  7. Four Poets from Canada: Jones, Jonas, Mandel and Purdy

  8. Some Old, some New, some Boring, some Blew, and some Picture Books

  9. MacEwen’s Muse

10. The Messianic Stance: West Coast Seen

11. Nationalism, Limbo and the Canadian Club

12. Eleven Years of Alphabet

13. Al Purdy: Love in a Burning Building

Part II: 1972-1976

14. Travels Back

15. How do I get out of Here: The Poetry of John Newlove

16. Mathews and Misrepresentation

17. Reaney Collected

18. Adrienne Rich: Diving Into the Wreck

19. Audrey Thomas: Blown Figures

20. Erica Jong: Half-Lives

21. What’s so Funny? Notes on Canadian Humour

22. On Being a Woman Writer: Paradoxes and Dilemmas

23. Adrienne Rich: Poems, Selected and New

24. Kate Millett: Flying

25. The Curse of Eve–Or, What I Learned in School

26. Canadian Monsters: Some Aspects of the Supernatural in Canadian Fiction

27. Adrienne Rich: Of Woman Born

28. Marie-Claire Blais: St. Lawrence Blues

29. Audrey Thomas: Ten Green Bottles, Ladies & Escorts

30. Marge Piercy: Woman on the Edge of Time, Living in the Open

Part III: 1977-1982

31. A Harvest Yet to Reap: A History of Prairie Women

32. Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

33. Timothy Findley: The Wars

34. Diary Down Under

35. Last Testaments: Pat Lowther and John Thompson

36. Tillie Olsen: Silences

37. Sylvia Plath: Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams

38. Valgardsonland

39. E. L. Doctorow: Loon Lake

40. Witches

41. An End to Audience?

42. Midnight Birds: Stories of Contemporary Black Women Writers

43. Nadine Gordimer: July’s People

44. Ann Beattie: Falling in Place

45. An Introduction to The Edible Woman

46. Canadian-American Relations: Surviving the Eighties

47. Amnesty International: An Address

48. Northrop Frye Observed

49. Jay Macpherson: Poems Twice Told

50. Writing the Male Character

Acknowledgements

Index