Its poetry month! Which means I’m finally getting around to reviewing this book I read a few months ago. Being a total House of Anansi fangirl, I couldn’t help but pick up a book said to be “the most important contemporary books of poetry in our country” by somebody who also wrote the ever-popular Alligator Pie.

First written in 1968, the book takes a pointed look at what it means to be human, but also what it means to be Canadian. Written in the midst of the Vietnam war, the book not-so-subtly points out the failures of Canadian politicians in doing anything meaningful about the conflict. And local politics are covered to: the rapid urbanization of the population, development of cities outpacing the natural world and human connections to it and to each other(of course, also written during the rise of the freeway, often built down the middle of major urban centres).

This book of poems absorbed me. I reread pages over and over, I dogeared, undersigned, and flagged lines I want to come back to over and over. From the perspective both of excellent poetry and Canadian history and politics, this book is one to recommend.