The first anthology to focus on the rich tradition of Canadian nature
poetry in English, Open Wide a Wilderness is a survey of Canada's
regions, poetries, histories, and peoples as these relate to the natural
world. The poetic responses included here range from the heights of the
sublime to detailed naturalist observation, from the perspectives of
pioneers and those who work in the woods and on the sea to the dismayed
witnesses of ecological destruction, from a sense of terror in
confrontation with the natural world to expressions of amazement and
delight at the beauty and strangeness of nature, our home. Arranged
chronologically, the poems include excerpts from late-eighteenth-century
colonial pioneer epics and selections from both well-known and more
obscure nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers. A substantial section
is devoted to contemporary writers who are working within and creating a
new ecopoetic aesthetic in the early twenty-first century.
Don McKay's introductory essay, "Great Flint Singing," explores in
McKay's inimitable way the thorny issues of Canadian poets'
representations of nature over the past 150 years. Focusing on key texts
by Duncan Campbell Scott, Charles G.D. Roberts, Earle Birney, Dennis
Lee, and others, the essay traces Wordsworthian influences in a New
World context, celebrates Canadian poets' love of natural history
observation, and finds a way through a rich and contradictory tradition
to current trends in ecopoetics.
