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A Suit of Nettles
A new edition of James Reaney's classic long poem which has been described, variously, as `the toughest and funniest, most literary and most serious long poem in English-Canadian literature' (Germaine Warkentin) and conversely as `whimsical self-indulgence' (W. J. Keith). A Suit of Nettles won the Governor General's award for poetry in 1958.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2010
11 people want to read
About the author
James Reaney
69 books2 followersJames Crerar Reaney, OC FRSC was a Canadian poet, playwright, librettist, and professor. Reaney won Canada's highest literary award, the Governor General's Award, three times and received the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama for both his poetry and his drama.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 8, 2024
One could hardly improve upon the review of James Reaney’s A Suit of Nettles by legendary critic Northrop Frye, originally appearing in 1958 in Letters in Canada:
. . . I have never read a book of Canadian poetry with so little ‘dissociation of sensibility’ in it, where there was less separating of emotion and intellect, of the directly visualized and the erudite. There are breath-taking flashes of wit, like the sexual image in January, ‘This stake and heart-of-vampire sexual eye of ooze’; there are moments of poignant beauty like the conclusion of June or the winter song in November; there are farce, fantasy, region, criticism, satire, all held together in a single controlling form. Mr. Reaney has not tried to grapple with contemporary life in the raw, but merely to perfect his poem. And – such is the perverse morality of art – he has succeeded, as I think no poet has so succeeded before, in bringing southern Ontario, surely one of the most inarticulate communities in human culture, into a brilliant imaginative focus. – Northrop Frye, In the Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination, (Toronto: House of Anansi, 1971, reprint 2017) p. 92
I will not try to improve on Mr. Frye’s judgment, but I will humbly attempt to add to it . . .
Mr. Reaney has succeeded, as Frye tells us, in perfecting his poem, and thereby he has succeeded in expressing what Sir Maurice Bowra described in his 1959 Presidential Address to The English Association as “The Prophetic Element” of poetry. . . .
The rest of my "bit of a pastiche of a review" may be found at https://behindthehedge.wordpress.com/...
. . . I have never read a book of Canadian poetry with so little ‘dissociation of sensibility’ in it, where there was less separating of emotion and intellect, of the directly visualized and the erudite. There are breath-taking flashes of wit, like the sexual image in January, ‘This stake and heart-of-vampire sexual eye of ooze’; there are moments of poignant beauty like the conclusion of June or the winter song in November; there are farce, fantasy, region, criticism, satire, all held together in a single controlling form. Mr. Reaney has not tried to grapple with contemporary life in the raw, but merely to perfect his poem. And – such is the perverse morality of art – he has succeeded, as I think no poet has so succeeded before, in bringing southern Ontario, surely one of the most inarticulate communities in human culture, into a brilliant imaginative focus. – Northrop Frye, In the Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination, (Toronto: House of Anansi, 1971, reprint 2017) p. 92
I will not try to improve on Mr. Frye’s judgment, but I will humbly attempt to add to it . . .
Mr. Reaney has succeeded, as Frye tells us, in perfecting his poem, and thereby he has succeeded in expressing what Sir Maurice Bowra described in his 1959 Presidential Address to The English Association as “The Prophetic Element” of poetry. . . .
The rest of my "bit of a pastiche of a review" may be found at https://behindthehedge.wordpress.com/...
Displaying 1 of 1 review