Purdy memoir rich and lyrical

Reviewed by David Helwig (Toronto Star, Sunday, May 20, 1984)

Morning And It’s Summer by Al Purdy, Quadrant Editions

The Sunday Before Winter by Marilyn Bowering, General

The Martha Landscapes by Colleen Thibaudeau, Brick Books

…To turn to Colleen Thibaudeau is to discover an entirely different set of poetic qualities. If Bowering leans towards portentousness, Thibaudeau’s The Martha Landscapes angles toward whimsy. Her poems are witty, personal, playful. Her subject matter is usually the life of small town and rural Ontario, present and past, but it is penetrated by dream, nightmare and a sense of history. She has a series of friendly parodies of other Canadian poets, but oddly, they all sound like Thibaudeau. Her voice, though it’s not loud or assertive, is, in its own way, insistent.

David Helwig is a poet and novelist living in Kingston, Ont.