Description
Book SynopsisAn all-inclusive edition of the poetry of Watson Kirkonnell would run to some ten large volumes of original verse and translations. His original verse would fill two volumes the size of this one, and his translated verse—from Icelandic, Italian, Dutch, French, Magyar, Latin, Ukrainian and Polish—would fill 5,000 pages. No poet in the English-speaking tradition is more deeply grounded in world literature.
The original poetry of Watson Kirkconnell has been primarily narrative in character: first, the twelve philosophically slanted books of his Spenserian epic, The Eternal Quest; then the seventeen vivid narratives in The Flying Bull, and Other Tales, a sort of Western echo of The Canterbury Tales; and finally the thirty narrative poems of his new Centennial Tales, many of which were written in 1964. These are framed about the history of Canada, and are written in honour of the nation's Centennial in 1967. They range from the comi