The Little Magazine in Canada 1925-1980 (ECW Press, 1984) by Ken Norris

It is generally better for the poet to accept than oppose the values inherent in his [sic] society; it is better for him to aim at simplicity than to perpetuate the the obscurity which is killing off the respect for poetry in the minds of intelligent readers; and it is better for him to use and not oppose the traditions of poetry—and for the Canadian poet not to completely ignore his relation to the traditions of poetry in Canada. (John Sutherland, cited in The Little Magazine in Canada)

Likewise, a history of literary criticism could be written, identifying its origins also within the poem, its exteriorizing serialization and the resolution of its subsequent crisis through state subsidy by its implantation into the university structure, a process of bureaucratization through which writing is transformed into the canon of Literature. (Ron Silliman, The New Sentence)

Norris is both a poet and historian of literary events, and for both he's gotten some well-deserved praise. As one of the 70s Vehicule Poets in Quebec he understands poetry movement; as an American-Canadian who teaches in Maine he's seen the foreign influence debate from both sides. As poet-activist he may very well have been the type of disgruntled, youthful advocate for "the little magazine" and the (post-)modernist writings they showcase, "view[ing] the world of publishing and popularizers with disdain, sometimes with despair." (7) Louis Dudek, Norris's friend and mentor, quoted on the same page, aptly describes the hostile opposition new magazine and writing are likely to encounter in Canada, "open to attack both from the side of popular taste of the great majority, and from the side of the conservatively-traditional educated class." (7) Dudek himself, perhaps Canada's most eloquent defender (and critic) of Modernism, wrote of the "small press" movement: and not surprisingly he seems to sit as guiding genius over the pages of Norris's work. So Norris is an observer of the Canadian literary scene with an ear close to the ground: his work giving invaluable insights into the nature of this dual poetics-press phenomenology as well as an honest prospectus on any future developments in those areas.

Norris's book is well articulated, open-handed and critical at the same time: it discloses the mechanisms through a transparent medium. And if anything, it's confirmed a hunch of mine that the Canadian literary scene tends to chase its own tail. It seems we've come full circle. With just the names of poets and poetry movements changed, a general picture of literary and publishing history emerges in which the conquering also become the conquered (conquering elements coming from both the outside and inside): so that if the early Modernists decry the bland servile work of the 20s "Canadian Authors' Association",for example, and the pioneering people's poetry movement of First Statement can decry that of the more urbane, Eurocentric Preview; and even if Alphabet, inspired by the writings of Northrop Frye, can try to put myth and symbol into the void left by sterile social-realist poetry (just to name some notable developments)—if these can occur, all the Leagues and Federations and Unions of today (the offsprings of that original Modernist impetus), and the failed experimentalist writing they've popularized, are fair game, ripe for renewal and even overthrow. Norris's work (in its narration of the twin press and poetries dialectic) urges me to view contemporary poetry as coming in for the same sort of radical questioning, and mostly by writers of what I've elsewhere called suppressed 'aesthetic' styles. It may just have been an unintended effect of this book to make 'radicals' of its readers, inspiring a need to dismantle oppressive literary regimes everywhere.

Norris's book is a call to action: radicalism hid in scholarly sheep's-clothing. Looked at as a whole it makes boundaries between literary styles and lit mags fluid and porous: this much is pretty evident, at least in principal, and leads me to conclude that we're set for  interesting literary realignments today. In fact, a close look at the way little magazines throughout the decades evolved makes that need for critique today seem mandatory. The author clearly outlines the stages through which this rise and fall of small magazines came about: beginning with the overturn of the Victorian monolith, the common enemy to youth and Modernism, we end with the wildly dissonant (and decentered) voices of today's predominantly left-wing poetics, and their literary mouthpieces (such as Open Letter), further solidified by Canada Council and its provincial grants program. But what actually did take place in the intervening decades, roused to vilification of English literary sensibilities and models, is a chronicle of the continuously shifting ground of poetry paradigm and the record of those seismic movements in poetry communities, and through the small magazines they created. In Norris's own words,

That the little magazine is engaged in a literary ferment and literary transformation is a point I have tried to make clear. Beginning with Pound and his circle in England, we see the little magazine as a vital and necessary tool in the furthering of Modernist poetry. Indeed, because the inclinations of Modernism are anti-consumerist and non-commercial, Modernist writing must literally create a home for itself. That haven, first and foremost, is the little magazine, the testing-ground and proving-ground for subsequent generations of literary experimenters and innovators. (179)

 And impulse for newness also always seemed to turn into compromise and sensible marketing opportunity, a tendency conjoined to the need for self-affirmation in foreign authorities. Nowhere is the need for experimentalism of a distinctly Canadian type ever expressed (The less well-known attempt of poets James Reaney and Jay Macpherson to write a 'mythopoeic' work based on the writings of Northrop Frye probably came closest to a made-in-Canada poetics (88-89)). The die was cast early. Consider closely, Norris says, the direction that the development of the "little magazine" ultimately was to give to the contemporary poetry scene and the dizzying array (typology) of presses and poetries it spawned: see how, particularly through editorial fiat, verses projected (in postmodern parlance) into every and yet no one distinctive type of writing. Magazines and later anthology collections looked like an index of open forms and fields rather than established specimens of 'good' writing.

Consider some of the more noteworthy developments, already begun above: how, to begin with, the cosmopolitan Preview in time gave way, under the American influence, to the more native First Statement, both of which merged into the Northern Review, the latter,under even the stronger American influence of Corman and Pound, to be supplanted by Souster's ultra-modernist Contact. And look at the way the demise of Contact ushered in CIV/n, an even more "realistic and vital poetry" (66) inspired almost wholly by Pound holding literary court from St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, and Souster's Contact and Dudek's Delta  became the 60s Combustion vying with the notorious Trish and GrOnk for subscriptions and readers. Marvel, too, at the way Tish's experimental form (mostly derivative in origin and design) morphed into Imago's need for a longer, more sequenced poem, then into George Bowering's search for the epic (of all things!) in the Open Letter.  And note that for  a time the Canadian Cerberus and American 'Black Mountain'/Origin groups formed a sort of literary offensive against the regressive forces of academic and bourgeois poetry everywhere.

Layton, Souster, and Dudek appeared side-by-side with Olson, Creeley, Corman, and others of the Black Mountain group because they all shared a tangible commitment to poetry, to keep it moving ahead and to write it in the real language of the day (68)

All the bluster about daring experimentalism in the history of the little magazine is really that of heady optimism for change (under the banner of "social realism") tempered by the exigencies of politics and demographics, and with the odd poetic temperaments threatening to take literary ideology down a markedly wrong path (as witness the infighting between Frank Davey and George Bowering in Open Letter). So that what started as initial opposition to one common English ancestry (the first parricide) gets displaced and twisted so often it's hard to see Can Lit today as anything but a collection of weak splinter factions. The "little magazine", mimeographed, bound and, if successful enough, issued as a quarterly, is the most telling indicator of that growth of a national literature towards its own present form .

Between the period of the first anti-Victorian rebellion and the present (to which Norris's book is devoted) lay all the poets and poetic innovations the "small magazine" movement promoted. And the curious interrelationships and transborder communiqués along the way just made things more interesting. Whatever was new, fresh and innovative, a clarion call for new poetics, almost within a decade was sure to become old, in some cases reversing editorial policy completely and catering in the end for styles it set out to supplant (as in the case of John Sutherland's Northern Review). It was a pattern most of the small magazines followed, minus the few that weren't on the market scene long enough to matter. And as in the case of Souster's joining forces with Cid Corman and his Origin poets Canadians were also prone to bouts of  self-effacement and the need to imitate the American and European masters: a fawning attitude particularly evident in matters of new Imagist poetic styles. Self-contradictions (such as that between Souster's internationalism and Dudek's nationalism )inherent in a small press movement coupled with a tendency to subserve foreign influences (primarily of the American Imagists) were factors bound to make the Canadian culture industry always unsteady on its legs, a fledgling enterprise from beginning to end. A condition that persists to this day.

Canada, then as now, never could get clear about what Modernism as a literary movement meant, certainly not with all their incessant editorial changes, about-faces and inner squabblings. And with the baby-boomers flocking to the universities in the 60s, and the emergence of creative writing instruction (a curriculum development inspired by marketing rather than purely aesthetic needs), things got even more cluttered, more confused. Canada went from a few well-known poets to almost an entire generation of student-writers more attuned to creativity and self-expression and, of course, addicted to recreating their own versions of the prototypical American 60s scene.

In the universities, many students turned their backs on the business interests of their parents' generation and concentrated on the arts and humanities. More emphasis was placed upon individual creativity, and there was an increase in creative-writing classes and classes in all aspects of the fine arts. University people of the sixties were never very far away from the act of creation, and so the number of young poets, artists, and artisans multiplied. (77)

Poets came out in unprecedented numbers.The result was a proliferation of styles and publication venues; the value of poetry was gauged more by publication success rates than by any perceived development in literary styles. The radical was bound to become mainstream, and it did. Perhaps the most perplexing irony, of all, is the institutionalized presence today of Coach House (131), what was once the spirit of poetic rebellion and insouciance now hardened into the dreaded Other: mainstream state-funded Art. And then, of course, the creation of Canada Council in 1957 permanently solidified the lethal nexus of poetry and politics for all time. Demographics, advances in the area of printing technology (gone were the Gestetner and mimeographed copies), widening market opportunities and a the creation of  state-run culture were to change the face of Canadian poetry for ever.