\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWto the money I was earning from freelancework; it kept us in food and evenpaid for a little wine.This is part of the story of Anthology'sorigins that seems to have been lost toofficial memory; certainly it is not mentionedin Robert Weaver's introductionto The Anthology Anthology.The programme was an important innovation;it preceded Tamarack Reviewby two years and Canadian Literature byfive years, so that it can be regarded asthe beginning of the little magazine revivalwhich started in the later 1950's. Italso initiated a period, through the 1950'sto the mid-1960's, when CBG radioturned to literature, and some ambitiousdramatic, documentary, and other literaryprogrammes were being done; theGBG in those days occupied a great dealof writers' time and for many of themprovided a large proportion of their incomes.It is almost two decades since the GBCbegan to abdicate its responsibilities tothe arts, and now, almost every otherliterary programme having vanished,Anthology has the look of a survivorrather than a pioneer. Lately its age hasbeen beginning to show, with duller programmesand less attention to the qualityof readers' voices. This is only natural;magazines of all kinds have their cycles,as Bob Weaver recognized when he choseto terminate Tamarack Review ratherthan handing it on, and perhaps Anthology'stime has come.If it has, The Anthology Anthologywill serve as a peculiarly appropriatemonument, for, whether deliberately ornot, the editor and his associates havenot chosen the best pieces that appearedon the programme so much as the mostrepresentative, so that what we have isreally a true portrait of a magazine ofthe air offered — as was inevitable overso long a period — dull and dating piecesas well as its small masterpieces of fictionand verse. Thus we have excellent storiesby Matt Cohen, Audrey Thomas, MarianEngel, and fine poems by Al Purdy,Gwen MacEwen, Phyllis Webb. Butthese are the reliables, and the collectionis short on writers who are relatively unknownand interesting. Some pieces areirremediably dated, like a conversationbetween Robert Fulford and NorthropFrye that took place in 1980, and someare shallow, like Morley Gallaghan'sappreciation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.And one reads often with a justifiedsense of déjà vu, for most of the pieceshave been published already in books orperiodicals, and some are very familiar,like Alice Munro's "The Shining Houses"and the poems from Margaret Atwood'sJournals of Susanna Moodie. The bookis a worthy and modest souvenir of aventure of some importance to Canada'sliterary history.GEORGE WOODCOCKFRANCO-ONTARIENNE/MANITOBA1NEMICHEL DACHY, Persévérance. Editions du Blé,$6.00.LAURENT GRENIER, La Page tournée. Editionsde Γ Univ. d'Ottawa, $7.95.ANDRE DUHAIME, Visions outaouaises / Ottawax.Editions de l'Univ. d'Ottawa, $8.95.JEAN MARC DALPE, Et a"ailleurs. Editions Prisede Parole, $8.00.ASSEZ DISPARATES ET PLUTÔT déroutantsles quelques derniers recueils de poésieparus en 1984 au Manitoba et en Ontariodiffèrent par la langue et par lecontenu. On y trouve, entre autres, de lapoésie traditionnelle écrite dans un styletravaillé. C'est le cas de Persévérence,premier essai poétique de Michel Dachy.Quant à La Page tournée de LaurentGrenier, les thèmes qui y sont développés153