New Provinces (poetry anthology)
| Author | F. R. Scott, ed. [anon.] |
|---|---|
| Country |
 Canada |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Publisher | Macmillan of Canada |
|
Publication date
|
May 11, 1936 |
New Provinces: Poems of Several Authors was an anthology of Canadian poetry published in the 1930s, anonymously edited by F. R. Scott assisted by Leo Kennedy and A. J. M. Smith. The first anthology of Canadian modernist poetry, it has been hailed as a "landmark anthology" and a "milestone selection of modernist Canadian verse".
Kennedy, Scott, Smith, and fellow Montreal poet A. M. Klein were all members of the Montreal Group of poets centred on that city's McGill University in the 1920s and early 1930s. Smith and Scott had co-edited the McGill Fortnightly Review; Kennedy and Klein were respectively editors of the Review's successor journals, the Canadian Mercury and the McGilliad. The four poets began assembling an anthology of poetry in 1931, and in 1934 invited Toronto poets Robert Finch and E. J. Pratt to join them.
Scott and Smith disagreed over also inviting Toronto poet Dorothy Livesay. "Smith twice explicitly suggested to Scott that Livesay’s poetry be included in the volume. On both occasions Scott refused, saying that Livesay’s work would be appropriate for a second, 'more political' edition of New Provinces at a later date." (Scott was a founder of the social democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, while Livesay was a member of the Communist Party of Canada.) Much later, though, Livesay told an interviewer that Scott had wanted to include her work, and that it was Pratt who had vetoed it.
There were other disagreements between Scott and Smith. "Smith wanted the volume to offer an up-to-the minute statement on the contributors' work, while Scott wanted it to offer a more historical statement on the development of the contributors' poetry, in hopes of calling forth other, unknown modernist poets-in-the-making."
In line with the anthology he envisioned, Smith penned a Preface in 1934 that was a manifesto of modernism and a rejection of all that had gone before. In Canadian poetry, he mocked, "The most popular experience is to be pained, hurt, stabbed or seared by beauty—preferably by the yellow flame of a crocus in the spring or the red flame of a maple leaf in the autumn." "The fundamental criticism that must be brought against Canadian poetry as a whole," he added, "is that it ignores the intelligence. And as a result it is dead." Scott had trouble reconciling that tone with the anthology he planned. "You will have to be careful not to make claims for a greater radicalism than this volume will show,” he warned Smith.
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