Earle Birney’s Poetry: A Study

Abstract

In the history of Canadian poetry, one may see three distinct phases, namely, Confederation to the World War I, the 1920s to the World War II, and the late twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. The Canadian poets who appeared during the first phase were largely influenced by the English Romantics and the early Victorians, and looked for themes in their own natural landscape. The poets of the second phase, with the emergence of modernism, created an outlet for the new poetry and reflected their fascination with the sea and with the impersonal violence of nature. But it is only in the third phase, Canadian poetry has undergone radical change with the contribution of poets like Earle Birney and others. These poets exhibited a new social awareness and came out with experimental poetry characterized by cosmopolitanism, metaphysical strains, symbolism, and so on. An attempt is made in the present paper to examine Earle Birney’s three poems - 'David,' 'November Walk,' and 'The Bear on the Delhi Road.' They are extracted from three of his representative anthologies David and Other Poems (1942), Near False Creek Mouth (1964), and Fall and Fury (1978) which show Birney’s encyclopedic knowledge on Canadian subjects and also virtually every part of the globe.