Poems sorted chronologically, from The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English

Poems sorted chronologically, from The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English

Author	Title	First Lines	Page	Year
Robert Hayman	The Pleasant Life in Newfoundland	The Aire in Newfoundland-land is wholesome, good	1	1628
Joseph Stansbury	To Cordelia	Believe me, Love, this vagrant life	2	1784
Oliver Goldsmith	The Lonely Settler	What noble courage must their hearts have fired	5	1825
Standish O'Grady	Winter in Lower Canada	Thou barren waste; unprofitable strand	3	1841
Charles Heavysege	The Winter Galaxy	The stars are glittering in the frosty sky	7	1855
Charles Sangster	The Thousand Islands	The bark leaps love-fraught from the land; the sea	11	1856
Charles Sangster	From 'Sonnets Written in the Orillia Woods'	Our life is like a forest, where the sun	13	1860
Alexander McLachlan	The Arrival	Soon we entered in the woods	9	1861
Alexander McLachlan	Song	Old England is eaten by knaves	8	1861
Charles Heavysege	The Dead	How great unto the living seem the dead!	7	1865
Alexander McLachlan	We Live in a Rickety House	We live in a rickety house	10	1874
Isabella Valancy Crawford	A Battle	Slowly the Moon her banderoles of light	18	1874
Isabella Valancy Crawford	The Camp of Souls	My white canoe, like the silvery air	19	1880
Isabella Valancy Crawford	The Dark Stag	A startled stag, the blue-grey Night	21	1883
Isabella Valancy Crawford	Said the Canoe	My masters twain made me a bed	23	1884
Charles G.D. Roberts	The Potato Harvest	A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne	29	1886
Charles G.D. Roberts	Tantramar Revisited	Summers and summers have come, and gone with the flight of the swallow	27	1886
Charles Mair	From 'Tecumseh'	There was a time on this fair continent	13	1886
Archibald Lampman	Heat	From plains that reel to southward, dim	33	1888
Wilfred Campbell	Indian Summer	Along the line of smoky hills	39	1888
Wilfred Campbell	The Winter Lakes	Out in a world of death far to the northward lying	40	1889
Bliss Carman	Low Tide on Grand Pré	The sun goes down, and over all	42	1893
Charles G.D. Roberts	The Mowing	This is the voice of high midsummer's heat	30	1893
Charles G.D. Roberts	The Pea-Fields	These are the fields of light, and laughing air	30	1893
Charles G.D. Roberts	The Herring Weir	Back to the green deeps of the outer bay	31	1893
Duncan Campbell Scott	At the Cedars	You had two girls—Baptiste—	47	1893
Wilfred Campbell	How One Winter Came in the Lake Region	For weeks and weeks the autumn world stood still	41	1893
Wilfred Campbell	Morning on the Shore	The lake is blue with morning; and the sky	42	1893
Archibald Lampman	In November	With loitering step and quiet eye	34	1895
Archibald Lampman	The City of the End of Things	Beside the pounding cataracts	35	1895
Frederick George Scott	The Unnamed Lake	It sleeps among the thousand hills	46	1897
William Henry Drummond	The Log Jam	Dere's a beeg jam up de reever, w'ere rapide is runnin' fas'	25	1897
Archibald Lampman	Winter Evening	To-night the very horses springing by	38	1899
Archibald Lampman	A Thunderstorm	A moment the wild swallows like a flight	38	1899
Archibald Lampman	To a Millionaire	The world in gloom and splendour passes by	39	1900
Charles G.D. Roberts	The Skater	My glad feet shod with the glittering steel	31	1901
Charles Mair	Song from 'The Last Bison'	Hear me, ye smokeless skies and grass-green earth	15	1901
Bliss Carman	Lord of My Heart's Elation	Lord of my heart's elation	44	1903
Duncan Campbell Scott	On the Way to the Mission	They dogged him all one afternoon	52	1905
Duncan Campbell Scott	The Forsaken	Once in the winter	49	1905
Robert Service	The Cremation of Sam McGee	There are strange things done in the midnight sun	62	1907
Bliss Carman	Morning in the Hills	How quiet is the morning in the hills!	45	1912
Pauline E. Johnson	Marshlands	A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim	60	1912
Pauline E. Johnson	Ojistoh	I am Ojhistoh. I am she, the wife	58	1912
Marjorie Pickthall	Père Lalement	I lift the Lord on high	82	1913
John McCrae	In Flanders FIelds	In Flanders fields the poppies blow	61	1915
Marjorie Pickthall	Quiet	Come not the earliest petal here, but only	84	1922
E. J. Pratt	The Shark	He seemed to know the harbour	66	1923
Marjorie Pickthall	Two Souls	Most reverend Father, I have borne all wrong	84	1925
Theodore Goodridge Roberts	The Blue Heron	In a green place lanced through	65	1926
F.R. Scott	The Canadian Authors Meet	Expansive puppets percolate self-unction	91	1927
Dorothy Livesay	Green Rain	I remember long veils of green rain	134	1932
Duncan Campbell Scott	En Route	The train has stopped for no apparent reason	57	1935
Duncan Campbell Scott	At Gull Lake: August, 1810	Gull lake set in the rolling prairie—	53	1935
E. J. Pratt	The Final Moments	The fo'c'sle had gone under the creep	67	1935
A.J.M. Smith	The Lonely Land	Cedar and jagged fir / uplift sharp barbs	98	1936
E. J. Pratt	Silences	There is no silence upon the earth or under the earth like the silence under the sea	69	1937
Kennet Leslie	Halibut Cove Harvest	The kettle sang the boy to a half-sleep	85	1938
Kennet Leslie	Sonnet	The silver herring throbbed thick in my seine	86	1938
A.M. Klein	Heirloom	My father bequeathed me no wide estates	127	1940
E. J. Pratt	The Martyrdom of Brébeuf and Lalemant, 16 March 1649	No doubt in the mind of Brébeuf that this was the last	70	1940
F.R. Scott	Brébeuf and his Brethren	When Lalemant and de Brébeuf, brave souls	92	1941
Earle Birney	Anglosaxon Street	Dawn drizzle ended dampness steams from / blotching brick and blank plasterwaste	106	1942
Earle Birney	Slug in Woods	For eyes he waves greentipped / taut horns of slime They dipped	114	1942
Earle Birney	David	David and I that summer cut trails on the Survey	108	1942
Raymond Knister	Boy Remembers in the Field	What if the sun comes out	89	1942
E. J. Pratt	The Truant	What have you there?' the great Panjandrum said	75	1943
Anne Marriott	Prairie Graveyard	Wind mutters thinly on the sagging wire	164	1945
P.K. Page	Stories of Snow	Those in the vegetable rain retain / an area behind their spouting eyes	179	1945
Louis Dudek	Garcia Lorca	It was as if the devil of evil had got / the God of all that is good by the throat	204	1946
Patrick Anderson	From 'Poem on Canada': Cold Colloquy	What are you . . ? they ask, in wonder	170	1946
A.M. Klein	The Break-up	They suck and whisper it in mercury, / the thermometers. It is shouted red	127	1948
A.M. Klein	Indian Reservation: Caughnawaga	Where are the braves, the faces like autumn fruit	128	1948
A.M. Klein	Portrait of the Poet as Landscape	Not an editorial-writer, bereaved with bartlett	129	1948
Douglas LePan	Coureurs de bois	Thinking of you, I think of the coureurs de bois	168	1948
Douglas LePan	A Country Without a Mythology	No monuments or landmarks guide the stranger	167	1948
P.K. Page	The Permanent Tourists	Somnolent through landscapes and by trees / nondescript, almost anonymous	186	1948
George Woodcock	Imagine the South	Imagine the South from which these migrants fled	159	1949
James Reaney	The School Globe	Sometimes when I hold / Our faded old globe	253	1949
James Reaney	The Upper Canadian	I wish I had been born beside a river / Instead of this round pond	254	1949
Raymond Knister	February's Forgotten Mitts	Shep lies long-bodied upon the auburn grass—	90	1949
Raymond Knister	Nell	Nellie Rakerfield / Came from an estate in Scotland	90	1949
P.K. Page	Photos of a Salt Mine	How innocent their lives look, / how like a child's	181	1951
E. J. Pratt	The Pre-Cambrian Shield	On the North Shore a reptile lay asleep—	80	1952
Earle Birney	Bushed	He invented a rainbow but lightning struck it	115	1952
Raymond Souster	Lagoons, Hanlan's Point	Mornings / before the sun's liquid	220	1952
Raymond Souster	The Man Who Finds That His Son Has Become a Thief	Coming into the store at first angry / At the accusation, believing in	219	1952
Douglas LePan	The Net and the Sword	Who could dispute his choice / That in the nets and toils of violence	169	1953
P.K. Page	T-bar	Relentless, black on white, the cable runs	185	1953
Patrick Anderson	Houses Burning: Quebec	A house on fire! We stumbled over the snow	172	1953
A.J.M. Smith	Resurrection of Arp	On the third day rose Arp	102	1954
A.J.M. Smith	The Dead	The dead / Stare out of empty sockets	101	1954
A.J.M. Smith	The Common Man	Somewhere his number must have been betrayed	99	1954
F.R. Scott	Laurentian Shield	Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer	95	1954
F.R. Scott	Lakeshore	The lake is sharp along the shore	93	1954
F.R. Scott	W.L.M.K.	How shall we speak of Canada, / Mackenzie King dead?	92	1954
Anne Wilkinson	Lens	The poet's daily chore / Is my long duty	141	1955
Anne Wilkinson	In June and Gentle Oven	In June and gentle oven / Summer kingdoms simmer	143	1955
Anne Wilkinson	Daily the Drum	Daily the drum is burst / It is not only or foremost	144	1955
Irving Layton	The Cold Green Element	At the end of the garden walk / the wind and its satellite wait for me	148	1955
Raymond Souster	Flight of the Roller Coaster	Once more around should do it, the man confided. . .	221	1955
Wilfred Watson	Emily Carr	Like Jonah in the green belly of the whale	148	1955
Wilfred Watson	Lines: I Praise God's Mankind in an Old Woman	I praise God's mankind in an old woman	147	1955
Irving Layton	The Fertile Muck	There are brightest apples on those trees / but until I, fabulist, have spoken	150	1956
Irving Layton	From Colony to Nation	A dull people, / but the rivers of this country	151	1956
Irving Layton	The Improved Binoculars	Below me the city was in flames: / the firemen were the first to save	150	1956
P.K. Page	After Rain	The snails have made a garden of green lace	184	1956
R.A.D. Ford	Twenty Below	The woman watches her husband rubbing his nose	174	1956
Daryl Hine	A Bewilderment at the Entrance of the Fat Boy into Eden	No knowing where he was or how he got there, / Led by the gentle sessions of his demons	315	1957
Daryl Hine	Fabulary Satire iV	The fox and crow, their dirty business finished, / Each in the aqueous landscape played his part	317	1957
Dorothy Roberts	Dazzle	Light looks from a dazzled leaf / Stares like a small sun	118	1957
Dorothy Roberts	Cold	My grandparents lived to a great age in the cold—	118	1957
Jay Macpherson	The Ark	I wait, with those that rest / In darkness till you come	284	1957
Jay Macpherson	The Fisherman	The world was first a private park / Until the angel, after dark	287	1957
Irving Layton	For Mao Tse-Tung: A Meditation on Flies and Kings	So, circling about my head, a fly. / Haloes of frantic monotone	152	1958
Ronald Everson	One-night Expensive Hotel	Evening outdoors is only a larger lobby	103	1958
George Johnston	Cathleen Sweeping	The wind blows, and with a little broom / She sweeps against the cold clumsy sky	163	1959
George Johnston	War on the Periphery	Around the battlements go by / Soldier men against the sky	162	1959
James Reaney	Granny Crack	I was a leather skinned harridan / I wandered the county's roads	256	1959
James Reaney	The Lost Child	Long have I looked for my lost child. / I head him shake his rattle	257	1959
Margaret Avison	Meeting together of Poles and Latitudes (In Prospect)	Those who fling off, toss head, / Taste the bitter morning, and have at it—	198	1960
Margaret Avison	Snow	Nobody stuffs the world in at your eyes. / The optic heart must venture: a jail-break	196	1960
Margaret Avison	New Year's Poem	The Christmas twigs crispen and needles rattle / Along the windowledge	197	1960
Margaret Avison	Thaw	Sticky inside their winter suits / The Sunday children stare at pools	196	1960
Margaret Avison	The Swimmer's Moment	For everyone / The swimmer's moment at the whirlpool comes	195	1960
Margaret Avison	Civility a Bogey, or, Two Centuries of Canadian Cities	Chinashop at seaborde, / a speckled chinashop	199	1960
Alden Nowlan	Beginning	From that they found most lovely, most abhorred, / my parents made me: I was born like sound	295	1961
D.G. Jones	The River: North of Guelph	The river is so much mica / running in its shallow curse	279	1961
D.G. Jones	These Trees Are No Forest of Mourners	They had dragged for hours. / The weather was like his body	278	1961
Leonard Cohen	You Have the Lovers	You have the lovers, / they are nameless, their histories only for each other	305	1961
Leonard Cohen	A Kite Is a Victim	A kite is a victim you are sure of. / You love it because it pulls	304	1961
Al Purdy	Night Song for a Woman	A few times only, then away, / leaving absence akin to presence	210	1962
Al Purdy	Remains of an Indian Village	Underfoot rotten boards, forret rubble, bones. . . / Animals were here after the plague	208	1962
Earle Birney	Can. Lit.	since we'd always sky about / when we had eagles they flew out	116	1962
Earle Birney	The Bear on the Delhi Road	Unreal tall as a myth / by the road the Himalayan bear	116	1962
Phyllis Webb	Poetics Against the Angel of Death	I am sorry to speak of death again / (some say I'll have a long life)	269	1962
Phyllis Webb	To Friends Who Have Also Considered Suicide	It's still a good idea. / Its exercise is discipline	270	1962
Irving Layton	Butterfly on Rock	The large yellow wings, black-fringed, / were motionless	156	1963
Irving Layton	A Tall Man Executes a Jig	So the man spread his blankets on the field	154	1963
Malcolm Lowry	Christ Walks in This Infernal District Too	Beneath the Malebolge lies Hastings Street	138	1963
Malcolm Lowry	For 'Under the Volcano'	A dead lemon like a cowled old woman crouching in the cold	139	1963
Malcolm Lowry	The Lighthouse Invites the Storm	The lighthouse invites the storm and lights it	140	1963
Malcolm Lowry	Xochitepec	Those animals that follow us in dream	140	1963
Ronald Everson	Injured Maple	Lightning scratched our sugar maple, blood	104	1963
F.R. Scott	Night Club	The girls, brighter than wine, are clothed and naked	96	1964
George Bowering	Grandfather	Grandfather / Jabez Harry Bowering / strode across the Canadian prairie	322	1964
Leonard Cohen	Heirloom	The torture scene developed under a glass bell / such as might protect an expensive clock	306	1964
Phyllis Gotlieb	A Cocker of Snooks	We kept him an hour in the / bottom of a bushel basket, a	249	1964
Phyllis Gotlieb	Three-handed Fugue	Into Suburbia between eight and nine / the army of cleaning-women marches	248	1964
Phyllis Gotlieb	Late Gothic	From the window of my grandfather's / front room above the store I could see	247	1964
Phyllis Gotlieb	This One's on Me	1. The lives and times of Oedipus and Elektra / began with bloodgrim lust and dark carnality	249	1964
Raymond Souster	The Hunter	I carry the ground-hog along by the tail / all the way back to the farm, with the blood	221	1964
Al Purdy	The Cariboo Horses	At 100 Mile House the cowboys ride in rolling / stagey cigarettes with one hand reining	210	1965
Al Purdy	The Country North of Belleville	Bush land scrub land— / Cashel Township and Wollaston	212	1965
Leonard Cohen	I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries	I have not lingered in European monasteries / and discovered among the tall grasses tombs of knights	307	1965
Joe Rosenblatt	It's in the Egg	We are continually bored with the air, / the round doors, the flat tables, the straight spoons	300	1966
Margaret Avison	The Dumbfounding	When you walked here, / took skin, muscle, hair	201	1966
Margaret Avison	Unspeakable	The beauty of the unused / (the wheatear among birds, or	204	1966
Margaret Avison	In a Season of Unemployment	These green painted park benches are / all new. The Park Commissioner had them	200	1966
Margaret Avison	A Nameless One	Hot in June a narrow winged / long-elbowed-thread-legged	203	1966
Ralph Gustafson	Columbus Reaches Juana, 1492	We fled from the sight inland and that night	123	1966
Robert Finch	Last Visit	The place we could never enter hides away still	96	1966
Robert Finch	Silverthorn Bush	I am a dispossessed Ontario wood	97	1966
Alden Nowlan	Suppose This Moment Some Stupendous Question	Suppose this moment some stupendous question / such as they asked of Lazrus. The dead	297	1967
Alden Nowlan	For Jean Vincent d'Abbadie, Baron St.-Castin	Take heart, monsieur, four-fifths of this province / is still much as you left it: forest, swamp and barren	298	1967
Alden Nowlan	In the Operating Room	The anesthetist is singing / 'Michael, row the boat shore,	296	1967
D.G. Jones	On a Picture of Your House	The first pale shoots / the plants make flower	281	1967
D.G. Jones	For Spring	Earth holds the sunlit / locks of the snow	282	1967
David Helwig	For Edward Hicks	At least a hundred times, / there's the marvel	328	1967
David Helwig	A Dead Weasel	Old snake, old hole in the corner man, / miniature killer, lithe and stinking	329	1967
Dorothy Livesay	Without Benefit of Tape	The real poems are being written in outports / on backwoods farms	134	1967
Eli Mandel	Houdini	I suspect he knew that trunks are metaphors / could distinguish between the finest rhythms	229	1967
Eli Mandel	From the North Saskatchewan	when on the high bluff discovering / the river cuts below	228	1967
George Jonas	Portrait: The Freedom Fighter	In the streetcar conductor's uniform / The man tried to roll himself a cigarette	310	1967
George Jonas	Temporal	This is one of those Tuesdays / I want to be old	311	1967
George Woodcock	Poem for Garcia Lorca	Count on dead fingers of time the years that pass	160	1967
Irving Layton	For Musia's Grandchildren	I write this poem / for your grandchildren	157	1967
Ken Belford	Turn (a poem in 4 parts)	What they are doing is turning / The earth / In ordered furrows	436	1967
Ken Belford	Carrier Indians	They have no word for conscience. / Instead, say sdzi, meaning / Heart	438	1967
Milton Acorn	The Fights	What an elusive target / the brain is! Set up	234	1967
P.K. Page	The Snowman	Ancient nomadic snowman has rolled round	182	1967
Raymond Souster	On the Rouge	I can almost see / my father's canoe	222	1967
Victor Coleman	Day Twenty-three	The ground beneath my feet is cracked . the world / opens to this sense of wracked pain I have	415	1967
Victor Coleman	How the Death of a City Is Never More Than the Sum of the Deaths of Those Who Inhabit Its Spaces	A town might abort / in its early stages / as a woman, the weight	413	1967
Al Purdy	Wilderness Gothic	Across Roblin Lake, two shores away, / they are sheathing the church spire	214	1968
Anne Wilkinson	Nature be Damned	Pray where would lamb and lion be / If they lay down in amity?	145	1968
Daryl Hine	Point Grey	Brought up as I was to ask of the weather / Whether it was fair or overcast	318	1968
Gwendolyn MacEwen	The Things Is Violent	Self, I want you now to be / violent and without history	388	1968
Gwendolyn MacEwen	A Breakfast for Barbarians	my friends, my sweet barbarians, / there is that hunger which is not for food—	387	1968
Gwendolyn MacEwen	Manzini: Escape Artist	now there are no bonds except the flesh; listen— / there was this boy, Manzini, stubborn with	386	1968
Jay Macpherson	The Beauty of Job's Daughters	The old, the mad, the blind have fairest daughters	288	1968
Joe Rosenblatt	Ichthycide	My uncle was Sabbath crazed / wouldn't flick a switch on Saturday	301	1968
John Newlove	The Pride	The image/ the pawnees / in their earth-lodge villages	338	1968
John Newlove	What Do You Want?	I want a good lover / who will not mistreat me	335	1968
John Newlove	Samuel Hearne in Wintertime	In this cold room / I remember the smell of manure	336	1968
W.W.E. Ross	If Ice	If / ice shall melt	88	1968
W.W.E. Ross	The Diver	I would like to dive	87	1968
W.W.E. Ross	The Snake Trying	The snake trying / to escape the pursuing stick	88	1968
Dorothy Livesay	Waking in the Dark	Whenever I see him / in mind's eye	135	1969
Dorothy Livesay	The Uninvited	Always a third one's there / where any two are walking out	136	1969
Elizabeth Brewster	Death by Drowning	Plunging downward through the slimy water	225	1969
Elizabeth Brewster	If I Could Walk Out into the Cold Country	If I could walk out into the cold country / And see the white and innocent dawn arise	224	1969
Elizabeth Brewster	Great-Aunt Rebecca	I remember my mother's Aunt Rebecca / Who remembered very well Confederation	223	1969
George Bowering	Dobbin	We found dead animals in our sagebrush hills, / every day it seems now, deer, heads of	323	1969
George Bowering	The House	If I describe my house / I may at last describe my self	324	1969
George Bowering	The Envies	I watcht as the flung screen door / slammed across our kitten's throat	326	1969
Gwendolyn MacEwen	The Discovery	do not imagine that the exploration / ends, that she has yielded all her mystery	388	1969
Gwendolyn MacEwen	Dark Pines Under Water	This land like a mirror turns you inward / And you become a forest in a furtive lake	389	1969
Lionel Kearns	Foreign Aid	Relaxing all day in this tropical atmosphere / glass in hand, a mosquito net and fans at night	319	1969
Lionel Kearns	Environment	Bent old men and women and dirty children scavenging for scraps of paper to pack in immense bundles on their backs for a few centavos	321	1969
Milton Acorn	I've tasted my blood	If this brain's over-tempered / consider that the fire was want	236	1969
Milton Acorn	On Saint-Urbain Street	My room's bigger than a coffin / but not so well made	236	1969
Milton Acorn	Knowing I Live in a Dark Age	Knowing I live in a dark age before history, / I watch my wallet and	237	1969
Miriam Waddington	Icons	Suddenly they warm me / in middle age in the heatless winters	188	1969
Phyllis Gotlieb	Death's Head	at 3 a.m. I run mu tongue / around my teeth (take in a breath)	252	1969
R.A.D. Ford	Sakhara	Here the eye is inevitably cast / Down, fixed on the desert	175	1969
R.A.D. Ford	Earthquake	The seasons burn. The wind is dry, / Like the tongue of a sickly dog	176	1969
Ronald Everson	Stranded in My Ontario	Madame Maynard of the hard pebble / beach eight thousand years old	106	1969
Ronald Everson	Pauper Woodland	Settlers abandoned our county long ago	105	1969
Tom Marshall	Interior Monologue #666	'Hydrocephalics are holy, too, / they have / a certain / bloated beatitude . . .'	333	1969
Tom Marshall	Summer	Sun blooms in our bodies / like a soft death	332	1969
Alden Nowlan	The Bull Moose	Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain, / lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar	299	1970
Bertram Warr	Working Class	We have heard no nightingales singing / in cool, dim lanes, where evening	194	1970
J. Michael Yates	From 'The Great Bear Lake Meditations'	I persist in a little fabric between me and the world.	348	1970
John Newlove	America	Even the dissident ones speak / as members of an Empire, residents	344	1970
Margaret Atwood	Death of a Young Son by Drowning	He, who navigated with success / the dangerous river of his own birth	349	1970
Seymour Maine	Roots	—Holy man, ungird your gaberdeen. Rest. Tell us of those days when you sat next to the Sataàn, and each of you stroked the other's beard.	426	1970
Al Purdy	Apoem	You are ill and so I lead you away / and put you to bed in the dark room	215	1971
Bill Bissett	dont worry yr hair	dont worry yr eyes / dont worry yr brain man th snow is	360	1971
Dorothy Livesay	The Children's Letters	They are my secret food / consumed in the most hushed corners	137	1971
Dorothy Livesay	Spain	When the bare branch responds to leaf and light	138	1971
Eldon Grier	Mountain Town—Mexico	Arms at my side like some inadequate sign	177	1971
Eldon Grier	Kissing Natalia	Invention begs from door to door in the indescribable darkness	178	1971
Eldon Grier	My Winter Past	I owe nothing to winter / because it is not my way to be cold	178	1971
John Glassco	Quebec Farmhouse	Admire the face of plastered stone	119	1971
John Glassco	One Last Word	Now that I have your hand, let me persuade you	122	1971
John Glassco	The Entailed Farm	A footpath would have been enough	120	1971
Louis Dudek	The Dead	After we knew that we were dead we sat down and cried a little	207	1971
Louis Dudek	Coming Suddenly to the Sea	Coming suddenly to the sea in my twenty-eighth year	206	1971
Tom Marshall	From 'Politics'	They will win, I thought once, / because they have a myth	334	1971
David Helwig	Drunken Poem	Afternoon is invading my eyes / Between here and the barn	330	1972
David Helwig	Words from Hell	I was eighteen when I came in these gates / on a sentence of indeterminate duration	332	1972
David Helwig	Considerations	Any country is only a way of failing, / and nationality is an accident of time	331	1972
Dennis Lee	From 'Civil Elegies'	Often I sit in the sun and brooding over the city, always	367	1972
George Johnston	Veterans	There are seventy times seven kinds of loving / None quite right	164	1972
George Johnston	Bliss	The less said about Edward's slut the better	163	1972
Joe Rosenblatt	Of Dandelions & Tourists	Dandelions purr in their sleep. / The hillside is dotted with yellow cubs	302	1972
Joe Rosenblatt	The Ant Trap	Brown semicolons move doggedly / through a round metal supermarket	302	1972
Joe Rosenblatt	Cat	The grey psychopath in her season / scatters the birds into the shadows	303	1972
Joe Rosenblatt	Fish	I touched the flesh with my eyes / It was that of a woman with scales	303	1972
Leonard Cohen	'The killers that run . . .'	The killers that run / the other countries	308	1972
Miriam Waddington	The Women's Jail	This garden is outlandish / with its white picket fence	190	1972
Miriam Waddington	Old Women of Toronto	All old women sometimes come to this: they go to live away, they cross ravines	190	1972
Miriam Waddington	Advice to the Young	Keep bees and / grow asparagus	191	1972
Charles Lillard	Bushed	This morning we found him / mumbling and eating bushes / so we tied him to a tree	420	1973
Dale Zieroth	Beautiful Woman	Beautiful woman, you crown the hours / and we grow wonderful, we grow secret	446	1973
Dale Zieroth	The Hunters of the Deer	The ten men will dress in white / to match the snow and leave the last	448	1973
Eli Mandel	On the 25th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz: Memorial Services, Toronto, January 25, 1970 YMHA Bloor & Spadina	the name is hard / a German sound made out of	230	1973
Eli Mandel	Envoi	my country is not a country / but winter	229	1973
Gary Geddes	The Inheritors	They possessed nothing, the / bare essentials / of land and sky	380	1973
Gary Geddes	Transubstantiation	The pig stands squarely / in the boarded stall, looking	378	1973
John Thompson	The Onion	I have risen from your body / full of smoke, charred fibres	346	1973
John Thompson	The Bread Hot from the Oven	Under the ice with its bouldery death's faces / hidden forms begin to churn the tides	345	1973
Michale Ondaatje	Letters & Other Worlds	My father's body was a globe of fear / His body was a town we never knew	406	1973
Michale Ondaatje	Breaking Green	Yesterday a Euclid took trees. Bright green / it beat at one till roots tilted	409	1973
Michale Ondaatje	Burning Hills	So he came to write again / in the burnt hill region	404	1973
Paulette Jiles	Time to Myself	It takes time to make / yourself a stranger. / I go through town unknowing	403	1973
Paulette Jiles	Paper Matches	My aunts washed dishes while the uncles / squirted each other on the lawn with	402	1973
Paulette Jiles	Windigo	No one understands the Windigo, his voice like / the white light of hydrogen, only long	403	1973
Paulette Jiles	The Tin Woodsman	This is Hill 49, an arena for bad dreams. / The wind is flaying this ridge to the bone	401	1973
Peter Van Toorn	Mountain Study	After rain / dust's down, gone Dutch — / everything naked, wet, clear as Vermeer	431	1973
Peter Van Toorn	Shake'nbake Ballad	In 100% surefire arsenic / in snowwhite lye / in lepers' bathwater	430	1973
Anne Szumigalski	Visitors' Parking	O Mary Mary lying on the wheel / looking up through rafters	260	1974
Doug Fetherling	Elijah Speaking	I expected this face but did not predict it	464	1974
Doug Fetherling	Explorers as Seen by the Natives	The need to explore / is the reason they give / for coming / with lanterns to push back the dark	463	1974
Jay Macpherson	A Lost Soul	Some are plain lucky—we ourselves among them: / Houses with books, with gardens, all we wanted	289	1974
Jay Macpherson	They Return	Long desired, the dead return. / —Saw our candle and were safe	290	1974
Margaret Atwood	There Is Only One of Everything	Not a tree but the tree / we saw, it will never exist, split by the wind	350	1974
Margaret Atwood	November	This creature kneeling / dusted with snow, its teeth	351	1974
Robert Bringhurst	Deuteronomy	The bush. Yes. It burned like they say it did, / lit up like an oak in October — except	438	1974
Robin Skelton	Lakeside Incident	Slowly the vision grows. / A hand and then a hand	240	1974
Robin Skelton	Eagle	Vertigo is my territory. Man / only another movement, another shift	242	1974
Robin Skelton	Wart Hog	Moon-tusked, wrenching at roots, / I dream of women.	242	1974
Rona Murray	The Lizard	Do you remember the lizard? I remember the dark man	239	1974
Christopher Dewdney	Out of Control: The Quarry	It is a warm grey afternoon in August. You are in the country	469	1975
Daphne Marlatt	Femina	you who / fail, / subtly seeking, with your face / angled downward to the floor, to cups, to broom	395	1975
Daphne Marlatt	Imagine: A Town	Imagine a town running / (smoothly? / a town running before a fire	394	1975
David McFadden	House Plants	It has been a month since I gave up shaving / & already the houseplants are much more alert	381	1975
Don Coles	Photograph in a Stockholm Newspaper for March 13, 1910	Here is a family so little famous / their names were not recorded. They stand	276	1975
Don Coles	Natlya Nikolayevna Goncharov	Another of the placid beauties! Whose mother flaunts her before	277	1975
George Woodcock	Pacifists	The icy, empty dawn cracks in the fields	161	1975
George Woodcock	Paper Anarchist Addresses the Shade of Nancy Ling Perry	Out of our daylight into death you burn	160	1975
Milton Acorn	You Growing	You growing and your thought threading / The delicate strength of your focus	238	1975
Robert Bringhurst	Notes to the Reader	I: Have a Good Time. This is a poem. Take it. Pack it up / the mountain	442	1975
Robert Kroesch	Stone Hammer Poem	This stone / became a hammer	264	1975
Tom Wayman	The Chilean Elegies: 5. The Interior	The smell of potatoes just taken out of the earth. The problem every carpenter faces, where the wood	432	1975
Al Purdy	Alive or Not	It's like a story / because it takes so long to happen	215	1976
Andrew Suknaski	The Snake	his green eyes on the homestead of another man / he is not man enough to find his own—	396	1976
Charles Lillard	Lobo	I could kill you right now / Your grey brown hunch	421	1976
George Bowering	From 'Summer Solstice'	I am slowly dying, water evaporating / from a saucer. I saw my daughter this	327	1976
Miriam Waddington	Ten Years and More	When my husband / lay dying a mountain	193	1976
Colleen Thibaudeau	The Brown Family	All round the Browns stretched forty acres of potatoes	244	1977
Colleen Thibaudeau	Poem	I do not want only / The shy child with the shock of slippery wheatlike hair	246	1977
Colleen Thibaudeau	The Green Family	I will begin to delineate the green family. / Under the shade of the mother sat the father	243	1977
D.G. Jones	'From sex, this sea . . .'	From sex, this sea, we have emerged / into a quiet room	283	1977
David Donnell	Stepfathers	There you were in my dream last night, / burly, caught in mid-step, crop-headed or bald	364	1977
Elizabeth Brewster	Anti-Love Poems	No I don't love you / in spite of what I say	225	1977
Pat Lowther	Last Letter to Pablo	Under the hills and veins water / comes out like stars	313	1977
Pat Lowther	A Stone Diary	At the beginning I noticed / the huge stones on my path	312	1977
Ralph Gustafson	Wednesday at North Hatley	It snows on this place / And a gentleness obtains	126	1977
Ralph Gustafson	Mothy Monologue	The moth flew a bee-line, / The flame beckoned but there was	124	1977
Tom Wayman	Another Poem About the Madness of Women	It began as a joke: she did not like to leave the house / even to shop for groceries	434	1977
Andrew Suknaski	Chinese Camp, Kamloops (circa 1883)	in the photograph he stands alone / under a willow / before the small tent	397	1978
Bill Bissett	th wundrfulness uv th mountees our secret police	they opn our mail petulantly / they burn down barns they cant	361	1978
bp Nichol	Two Words: A Wedding	There are things you have words for, things you do not have words for.	428	1978
Christopher Dewdney	'This is of two worlds . . .'	This is of two worlds—the one diurnal men know and that other world where lunar mottled eels stir like dreams in shallow forest water	469	1978
David McFadden	A Form of Passion	This is the form my passion takes. / On a train heading into the night	382	1978
Don Domanski	Three Songs from the Temple	what are we to do with a heaven / that moves beneath stones / and fallen trees?	466	1978
Don Domanski	Deadsong	I star in the loam / I bed with the moony shapes / with my trapshut head	467	1978
Earle Birney	My Love Is young	my love is young & i am old / she'll need a new man soon	117	1978
Irving Layton	Grand Finale	I've seen the grey-haired lyrists come down from the hills	158	1978
John Thompson	'Now you have burned . . .'	Now you have burned your books: you'll go / with nothing but your blind, stupefied heart	347	1978
Margaret Atwood	Marrying the Hangman	She has been condemned to death by hanging	352	1978
Margaret Atwood	You Begin	You begin this way: / this is your hand	355	1978
P.K. Page	Evening Dance of the Grey Flies	Grey flies, fragile, slender-winged and slender-legged	187	1978
Patrick Lane	At the Edge of the Jungle	At the edge of the jungle / I watch a dog bury his head	293	1978
Patrick Lane	Passing into Storm	Know him for a white man. / He walks sideways into wind	291	1978
Patrick Lane	If	Like that dying woman in Mexico	291	1978
Patrick Lane	Stigmata	What if there wasn't a metaphor / and the bodies were only bodies	292	1978
Artie Gold	'I don't have the energy . . .'	I don't have the energy for another day / like a poor hand of scrabble without vowels . . .	451	1979
Artie Gold	sex at thirty-one	Is like love at seventeen. it plies deep / Affords the illusion there is nothing else.	451	1979
Artie Gold	Life	In a sense / it is the exact opposite of what we want and / that opposite isn't death / but fence	452	1979
Dennis Lee	The Gods	Who, now, can speak of gods— / their strokes and carnal voltage	371	1979
Francis Sparshott	The Naming of the Beasts	In that lost Caucasian garden / where history began	258	1979
Francis Sparshott	Three Seasons	August / A loon's long night call	259	1979
Francis Sparshott	Reply to the Committed Intellectual	Stalin stood committed to peasant hunger. / Hitler numbered among his commitments death	259	1979
George Bowering	In the Forest	They are in the forest / singing, they are in the	327	1979
Michale Ondaatje	Walking to Bellrock	Two figures in deep water. / Their frames truncated at the stomach	410	1979
Pier Giorgio Di Cicco	The Head Is a Paltry Matter	The head is a paltry matter; feed it crumbs, it goes on singing just the same	458	1979
Pier Giorgio Di Cicco	Errore	We talk of old men who have forgotten their / thoughts, of old women with cancer like	459	1979
Susan Musgrave	The Judas Goat	It was a bad sign I was born under, / half animal, half a cruel joke of nature	470	1979
Susan Musgrave	Returning to the Town Where We Used to Live	I found this photograph. / A woman is reaching towards you	471	1979
Anne Szumigalski	A Midwife's Story: Two	an experienced wife / (thius wasn't her first pregnancy)	262	1980
Anne Szumigalski	Angels	have you noticed / how they roost in trees?	263	1980
Barry McKinnon	Bushed	I am in a desert / of snow. each way / to go, presents an equal	424	1980
Barry McKinnon	The North	somebodies walked the woods / in the air, the lines appear, as a grid / cut thru trees	423	1980
bp Nichol	Gorg, a detective story	a man walks into a room. there is a corpse on the floor.	429	1980
David Donnell	Potatoes	This poem is about the strength and sadness of potatoes	365	1980
Don McKay	I Scream you Scream	train braking metal on metal on / metal teeth receiving signals from a dying star sparkling	392	1980
Don McKay	March Snow	The snow is sick. The pure / page breaks and greys and	393	1980
Don McKay	A Barbed Wire Fence Meditates Upon the Goldfinch	More than the shortest distance / between points, we are	391	1980
E.D. Blodgett	Snails	theirs is a gesture of sorrow, infinite and taut: / some conceive the war that never begins—	308	1980
E.D. Blodgett	Fossil	no branch nor the last grass / but the sky before me	309	1980
Frank Davey	She'd Say	I'll never reach 40,' my mother would say. / 'I have a short life-line,' she'd say	375	1980
Frank Davey	The Piano	I sit on the edge / of the dining room, almost	377	1980
Gail Fox	'It is her cousin's death . . .'	It is her cousin's death that / she must write about. Dead leaves	400	1980
Gail Fox	'She lay wrapped . . .'	She lay wrapped in the / tangle of bedclothes around / her lover	400	1980
Gail Fox	Portrait	She slipped. Heels over head she landed / in a bucket of blue paint. Fluent as blue	399	1980
Marilyn Bowering	Seeing Oloalok	'See, nothing has happened to her,' said my guide, 'nothing at all. Time has done nothing	456	1980
Marilyn Bowering	Russian Asylum	One of the difficulties is in being / alone, not one with anything or one	455	1980
Marilyn Bowering	Wishing Africa	There's never enough whiskey or rain / when the blood is thin and white	457	1980
Patrick Lane	The Measure	What is the measure then, the magpie in the field / watching over death, the dog's eyes hard as marbles	294	1980
Phyllis Webb	From 'The Kropotkin Poems'	Syllables disintegrate integrate alphabets / lines decline into futures and limbos	272	1980
Phyllis Webb	Spots of Blood	I am wearing absent-minded red / slippers and a red vest—	273	1980
Phyllis Webb	Imperfect Sestina	So what if Lowry got spooked by sea-birds and volcanoes crossing	274	1980
Phyllis Webb	The Days of the Unicorns	I remember when the unicorns / roved in herds through the meadow	271	1980
Sharon Thesen	Loose Woman Poem	A landscape / full of holes. / Woman. / Pierced	444	1980
Sharon Thesen	Kirk Lonegren's Home Movie Taking Place Just North of Prince George, With Sound	The beginning: Some landscape & words about nature, that particular landscape & what it harbors	445	1980
Sharon Thesen	Mean Drunk Poem	Backward & down into inbetween as Vicki says. Or as Robin teaches	443	1980
Al Purdy	Spinning	Can't see out of my left eye / nothing much happens on the left anyway'	218	1981
Al Purdy	The Dead Poet	I was altered in the placenta / by the dead brother before me	217	1981
Anne Marriott	As You Come In	The building / illuminates itself	166	1981
Anne Marriott	Beaver Pond	Not furred nor wet, the pointing words yet make	165	1981
Dale Zieroth	Baptism	In mid-river we join the ancient force / of mud and leaves moving in their journey	449	1981
David McFadden	Lennox Island	They're more beautiful than the angels of heaven / the beautiful Micmac children of Lennox Island	384	1981
Eli Mandel	The Madwomen of the Plaza de Mayo	They wear white scarves and shawls. / They carry pictures on strings about their necks	233	1981
Fred Wah	'Breathe dust . . .'	Breathe dust like you breathe wind so strong in your face	384	1981
Kristjana Gunnars	wakepick I	tonight I disentangle / soft underwool fibre from coarse hairs / make ready for carding	453	1981
Kristjana Gunnars	changeling VIII	every morning i break trail / down the mountainside / big snowflakes muffle my bootsteps	454	1981
Margaret Atwood	Variation on the Word 'Sleep'	I would like to watch you sleeping / which may not happen	359	1981
Margaret Atwood	Notes Towards a Poem That Can Never Be Written	This is the place / you would rather not know about	356	1981
Mary Di Michele	The Moon and the Salt Flats	The moon is an ivory tusk in the Utah sky / over the salt flats of ultra white	465	1981
Michale Ondaatje	The Cinnamon Peeler	If I were a cinnamon peeler / I would ride your bed / and leave the yellow bark dust	412	1981
Roo Borson	Jacaranda	Old earth, how she sulks, / dark spin-off / wielding wings and swords	474	1981
Roo Borson	Gray Glove	Among branches / a bird lands fluttering, / a soft gray glove / with a heart	472	1981
Roo Borson	Flowers	The sunset, a huge flower, wilts on the horizon. / Robbed of perfume, a raw smell	474	1981
Roo Borson	Talk	The shops, the streets are full of old men / who can't think of a thing to say anymore	473	1981
Seymour Maine	Before Passover	Before Passover there in the old flat / who searched at the underside of curtains	427	1981
Sid Marty	In the Dome Car of the 'Canadian'	The mongoloid boy is astounded / with joy at terrific / white-fanged mountains	425	1981
Tom Wayman	Wayman in Love	At last Wayman gets the girl into bed / He is locked in one of those embraces	435	1981
David Donnell	The Canadian Prairies View of Literature	First of all it has to be anecdotal; ideas don't exist	366	1982
Gwendolyn MacEwen	The Void	The last truly foolish thing I did was some years ago / When I flew the Hejaz flag from the pinnacle of All Souls	389	1982
Gwendolyn MacEwen	There Is No Place to Hide	Here is a famous world; I'm standing on a stage / With ten spotlights on me, talking about how I detest	390	1982
Pier Giorgio Di Cicco	Male Rage Poem	Feminism, baby, feminism. / This is the anti-feminist poem	459	1982
Pier Giorgio Di Cicco	Flying Deeper into the Century	Flying deeper into the century / is exhilarating, the faces of loved ones eaten out	461	1982
Robert Bringhurst	These Poems, She Said	These poems, these poems, / these poems, she said, are poems / with no love in them	441	1982