But he is also an artist in colorful lyrism of Nature in Canada, especially of the Laurentian district. Phelps is a refined, perhaps it were better to say, dainty lyrist; but he has also attempted new forms, and has been successful with realistic ‘free verse.’ The others, with a few exceptions, are systematic poets, but are not notable for spiritual vision or for originality in forms or substance.
It is, however, from the point of view of a fresh vision of earth and life and of originality in forms and substance that the work of Florence Randal Livesay, Grace Blackburn, Beatrice Redpath, Louise Morey Bowman, and Wilson MacDonald must be specially remarked. For their work displays a distinct advance in modernism over the work of Marjorie Pickthall, Robert Norwood, and Katherine Hale (earlier manner). In fact, there is in their work fresh origination in themes, structures, music, and social ideals. Florence Randal Livesay won distinction by her Songs of Ukraina (1916). Though formally called translations, they have such original elements of form and matter that they are no more translations in the ordinary meaning than is Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Mrs. Livesay’s work in the Songs of Ukraina, like that of Fitzgerald, has a turning of phrase and of imagery and a grace and music which are all her own and entitle the Songs to the distinction of creative verse. In 1923 she published Shepherd’s Purse. Here her genius flowered independently in what is essentially spiritual realism. But it is not a heavy spiritual realism. It exhibits a rare and light fancy for elusive emotional nuances; and all the poems have a piquancy, daintiness, and exquisite humanity which win one to the love of the evanescent beauty that is in all things human. The poems too have an air of the qualities which are in the vers de société and the ‘Blue China’ poetry of Andrew Lang and Austin Dobson. Mrs. Livesay has made a genuinely novel contribution to Canadian poetry.
Outstanding in other ways is the verse of Grace Blackburn, Beatrice Redpath, Louise Morey Bowman, and Wilson MacDonald. There is more strength and spiritual perceptiveness in the poetry of Grace Blackburn and Beatrice Redpath than in that of Louise Morey Bowman. All show equal originality and finish in the technical treatment of their themes, but Louise Morey Bowman shows at times an airy fancy which is almost so ethereal as to be altogether abstract and unearthly. On the whole, exquisite technique is their chief distinction; they are artists.
Wilson MacDonald in his Songs of the Prairie Land (1918) and The Miracle Songs of Jesus (1921) discloses an absorption in mystical psychology and psychoanalysis which, by its daring and his method of suffusing the matter with ingenious and subtilized novelty or beauty of diction and imagery, adumbrates Goethe of the Faust tradition. It is at once realistic and ultra-spiritualistic. His technique is just as original and individualized as the matter of his poems. If any Canadian has the right to the distinction of possessing sheer creative genius, that right belongs to Wilson MacDonald as a Seer and as an Artist working in a field of spiritual vision which he has pre-empted.
Sources of quotations in this chapter:
Marjorie Pickthall—The Wood Carver’s Wife and Other Poems (McClelland & Stewart: Toronto).
Robert Norwood—His Lady of the Sonnets (McClelland & Stewart: Toronto).
Katherine Hale—The White Comrade (McClelland & Stewart: Toronto); Morning in the West (Ryerson Press: Toronto).
Lloyd Roberts—England Overseas (Elkin Mathews: London).