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A Lover's Quarrel by Carmine Starnino  

More outspoken criticism from one of the ‘attack dogs of Canadian Literature’.

Already an award-winning poet, Carmine Starnino has also made his mark as a literary critic of great pluck, probity and irreverence. His highly regarded, often highly controversial writings on poetry have enlivened -- and often enraged -- the Canadian literary scene since they first began appearing in the late 1990s. He has tackled the careers of some of this country’s most notable poets (among them Irving Layton, Michael Ondaatje, Anne Carson, Tim Lilburn, Susan Musgrave, Christopher Dewdney) and done so in prose of great subtlety and style. Indeed, in Starnino’s literary criticism seditiousness and insight are made to live inside sentences that always square their shoulders and draw themselves to their full verbal height. A Lover’s Quarrel culls some of the highlights of Starnino’s dissenting exploits, and includes the never-before-published title essay, an ambitious reassessment of Canadian poetry. For readers unfamiliar with Starnino’s criticism, the release of A Lover’s Quarrel furnishes the perfect opportunity to read one of the few critics in Canada who can speak his mind and speak it well.

prize

2005—Quebec Writers' Federation, Mavis Gallant Prize,
Shortlisted

Table of contents

Introduction
A Lover’s Quarrel
Canadian Poets, Learn Your Trade (Susan Ioannou)
Get Tay Fuck Ootma Road (Christopher Dewdney)
The Other Outram
Vowel Movements (Christian Bok)
The Farmer-Fisher Bard: A Look at Charles Bruce
The World: Divine Text or Lilburnian Typo?
Canadian Poetry as a Busted Flush
A Sea-Witch’s (Sham)anistic Glamour (Susan Musgrave)
Ecstasy Like an Irritant in the Blood (Irving Layton)
Didactic Simplicities (Louis Dudek)
The Colours of Abe’s Fancy (A. M. Klein)
Couch-Potato Poet (David McGimpsey)
Deliberate Artfulness (John Reibetanz)
Giving Good Measure (Ricardo Sternberg)
The Power of the Pawn (David Solway)
Eight Short Views

Review quote

‘Might as well get this out of the way: Carmine Starnino is the most hated man in Canadian poetry, and he works hard at it. One can’t circulate in Canpo circles these days without hearing rabid denunciations, apoplectic attacks, and fulminant castigation as mindless as it is vehement. Yet for the purposes of a review, not a cross-burning, it is better not to dwell on this status too much other than to acknowledge that Starnino has, through the sheer force of his rhetoric, forced the poetry-loving public in this country to reevaluate its idols. As despised as his message sometimes is, it is finding an audience.’

—Shane Neilson, Arc (Ottawa)

Review quote

A Lover’s Quarrel is not only a good book -- thoughtful, stylish and consistently engaging -- it is also an important book because it begins to correct a reductive and largely unexamined consensus about what constitutes ‘‘Canadian Poetry’’ that has resulted from the well-intended but misguided literary nation-building carried out by such critics as Margaret Atwood, Dennis Lee and George Woodcock. Readers who pretend to love and believe in Canadian poetry and who ignore or dismiss this book will be impoverished as a result. As Starnino says, ‘‘dissent is essential for its own sake’’ (italics in original).’

—Zach Wells, The Danforth Review

Review quote

A Lover’s Quarrel is a big collection of essays and reviews in which the author struggles heroically to think and speak intelligently about what is wrong with most Canadian poetry, and by implication most Canadian ‘‘creative’’’ writing. His subjects are addressed nowhere else in the so-called critical literature of the nation, which consists almost entirely of thematic commentary. The result is that our good writing (and there is some very good writing here, but no tradition of good writing) is submerged in the conspiracy of mediocrity that hovers over our literature and renders it homogeneous and boring.’

—Stephen Osbourne, Geist

Review quote

‘Carmine Starnino is a poet and editor whose lively and engaging critical voice has joined the small but growing chorus of anti-establishment writers dissatisfied with the state of Canadian literary criticism and challenging the accepted canon on a number of grounds.’

—Doug Rollins, Montreal Review of Books

Review quote

‘Starnino’s high-contrast style almost begs reviewers to either blast or bless this book. Anything less means joining the wimpy ranks of the cautiously nice. Well, sorry folks: Starnino is not the moustache-twirling villain who ties bad poets to the rails, though he playfully (or anxiously?) supplies this very image in his epigraph. Nor is he simply the brave lad who dares proclaim the nakedness of Canada’s poetic emperors. In the mould of John Metcalf, he’s a kicker against the pricks, upholder of a narrow range of poetic values that is, to his credit, always explicit.’

—Harry Vandervlist, Quill and Quire

Review quote

‘Starnino, from his desk in Montreal, has already established a reputation as one of the most forthright and incisive poetry critics working in Canada’s literary press. Whatever one thinks of his judgements, there can be little doubt that he judges the work in front of him and not the reputation of the poet or the debased laurels wreathing the book’s uncracked spine. Starnino is widely read, and serious about craft, and his reviews exhibit a sharp understanding of what constitutes a good poem.’

—Books in Canada

Review quote

A Lover’s Quarrel is an interesting, quirky, look at recent Canadian poetry, and it will incite the further quarrels it obviously seeks.’

—Douglas Barbour, Canadian Book Review Annual

Review quote

‘Halfway though the title essay of A Lover’s Quarrel, his collection of reviews and essays on Canadian poetry, Carmine Starnino writes, ‘‘If Joseph Brodsky can declare poetry to be humanity’s anthropological destiny, then Canadian poetry is possibly its evolutionary dead-end.’’ Readers in Canada may be either delighted or outraged by that statement, but chances are few Americans will have the requisite background to judge its truth or falsity. In part, this is due to American ignorance of poetry being written in the rest of the English speaking world -- the British Isles included. In part it’s because Canadian literature, like Canada itself, is a relatively young phenomenon, and there is correspondingly less of it. And in part, Starnino says, it’s because of critical and poetic factors that have made the emergence of world-class poetry in Canada both more difficult both to create and to identify.’

—Bill Coyle, Contemporary Poetry Review

Review quote

‘In concluding, I’ll risk the kind of statement that would have seemed foolhardy at the outset: Carmine Starnino is one of the most important writers and readers of poetry in the contemporary English-speaking world. America has no one like him. It may be, for reasons of culture, history, and perhaps even geography, that only Canada could have produced him at this juncture. In any case, his talent, idealism, and ambition make his work exciting, and I would say necessary, reading. Unless, that is, we want to be hopelessly provincial.’

—Bill Coyle, Contemporary Poetry Review

Author comments

‘I am, at heart, simply a reader of Canadian poetry who is unhappy with the chronic overestimation of certain poets and is trying to bring attention to a number of other poets who I believe deserve more notice. It’s true that it seems to make me, at times, a partisan promoter. But all I’m doing is trusting my instincts. With whatever poetry I read, I trust my delight and I trust my doubts and, in the end, hope that the essays and reviews I write are able to persuasively advocate their bias.’


authorPic

Credit: Richard Malouf

Carmine Starnino has published five volumes of poetry, including This Way Out (Gaspereau, 2013), which was nominated for the Governor General’s Award. His most recent collection is Dirty Words (Gaspereau, 2020). Among his awards are the F.G. Bressani Literary Prize, the Canadian Author’s Association Prize for Poetry, and the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. Starnino is the editor of The New Canon: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry (Véhicule, 2005), and his critical writings have been collected in A Lover’s Quarrel: Essays and Reviews (Porcupine’s Quill, 2004) and Lazy Bastardism: Reviews and Essays on Canadian Poetry (Gaspereau, 2012). He lives in Montreal, where he is editor at large for The Walrus magazine.

The Porcupine's Quill would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. The financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) is also gratefully acknowledged.

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LITERARY CRITICISM / Canadian

LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry

ISBN-13: 9780889842410

Publication Date: 2004-11-30

Dimensions: 8.75 in x 5.56 in

Pages: 272

Price: $24.95