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The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane,

edited by Russell Morton Brown and Donna Bennett,
Toronto, Ontario: Harbour Publishing
$44.95. 544 pp.

Writing a review of Patrick Lane’s collected poems does not count as work. It’s more of a labour of love. There, I’ve laid out my cards: I am a fan of Lane’s work. Russell Brown and Donna Morton, two of Canada’s foremost Canadian literature scholars, have carefully edited fifty years of Lane’s poetic output, and this volume contains, as they note, “all the poems Lane wants to preserve (several revised for this publication).”

The volume opens with a poem by Lane called “Poets, Talking,” which encapsulates how poetry works for Lane: “I could wish poems happened more, but wanting them / only leads to the impediment of desire and desire / is never equal to the act. . . . ” While Lane applies himself with care to his writing, in this poem and others, he indicates that inspiration is part of the equation. But that fact is hardly an excuse to lie around waiting for one’s muse to send a poem into one’s brain. It takes a certain kind of heart and mind to be open to poetry, and the works (including fiction and memoir) that Lane has produced indicate that intensely curious, thoughtful, and sensitive are key factors to generating inspiration.

The editors give a short biography, and perhaps one of the most noteworthy aspects of Lane’s development as a poet is the complete absence of formal education. Married and a father at eighteen, Lane laboured for years to support his family. The working class world informs his perspective, and while he took off and did much travel and various jobs, his devotion to poetry remained steadfast. And perhaps from his family background and his years of physical toil came his firm connection to the concrete world.

Lane has been regarded as a muscular poet, the voice of the voiceless, the guy who can write about violence and poverty and other tragedies with a unique insight. But he can also be tender and loving, and the combination of the various emotions is generally amazing. And while Lane never went to university, he educated himself by reading widely and deeply. And he travelled. From the BC Interior where he grew up, Lane seems to have made the world his setting by fixing place firmly and specifically, whether it’s BC or Peru or China. And he’s known most of Canada’s renowned poets and affected many newer poets, either through his books or his stints as an instructor. “Whatever else poetry is freedom,” claimed Irving Layton. For Lane, the line would have to be “whatever else poetry is life.” His personal life has had its challenges. He battled the bottle and finally won. His relationships ended except for his long-term commitment to Lorna Crozier, with whom he has shared life and words for decades and to whom he dedicates this book.

And everything gets turned into luminous poetry. This collection must not lie on bookshelves. It should be at hand to open and appreciate on a regular basis. Its arrangement is chronological and simple – by decades. A few of my favourites are the following. From the Sixties is “Elephants,” in which the speaker (presumably Lane as he is the master of the lyric poem) carves an elephant for a boy who doesn’t know what an elephant is, and then the two discuss graveyards, the elephant graveyard in the jungle “which no one has ever found” and the graveyard of the boy’s ancestors “where no one will ever find it / buried under the grade of the new / highway.” But Lane’s emotion never slides into the sentimental. Brutality begets brutality and one must fight against that tide.

In the Seventies section, Lane has several poems from his travels in South America. “The Children of Bogotá” reveals the perspective of a man named Manuel who dismisses the children: “just because they look innocent / doesn’t make them human. Any one / would kill you for the price of a meal.” The poem forces an examination of what life must be like for these children who have no one to care for them and the resulting dehumanizing they are subjected to. Suffering is often Lane’s topic, as it is in “The Carpenter,” with its allusions to Christ and martyrdom and its comparison of a carpenter to a hawk building a nest.

Animals are abundant in Lane’s poetry, but so are people and flora and landscape and seasons. In the Eighties, Lane’s long poem “The Weight” is included. This poem has a slightly more unconventional layout than many of Lane’s poems, and it recalls Robert Kroetsch’s “Seed Catalogue,” one of the best Canadian long poems ever. Lane’s poem is less well-known, but it shouldn’t be. And I must mention “Night,” in which Lane talks about art that is significant to him: Albinoni, Alden Nowlan, netsuke, the Caracalla Baths, Cavafy, and his own poems, “the broken ones that will never be seen.”

The Nineties contains all the Winter poems, and these should be required reading. Of course, calling something required seems to diminish it somehow, so I take that back. (But I still kind of mean it.) Also in the Nineties section is “Fathers and Sons,” which I have often taught in a first year literature class, and it has brought tears to the eyes of young men who are struggling with their fathers. I am convinced that this poem has mended some broken relationships.

In the Twenty-First Century, Lane includes several prose poems for other poets, and some of the most troubling are the two poems for Roy Lowther (who killed his wife Pat out of jealousy about her success in poetry) and the poem for Pat Lowther. And at the end of this volume is a short essay by Lane called “A New Awakening” (written in March 2011), which touches on some poetic influences in his life. And finally University of Victoria English professor Nicholas Bradley provides a brief afterword.

The added material is helpful and fascinating, but it’s the poems that really matter. And though this volume is a collection, I’m sure I’m not the only one eagerly anticipating new work from this remarkable writer. And for the sake of honesty, I have spent some time with Patrick Lane (I interviewed him when his novel, Red Dog Red Dog, came out, and as Victoria is a small place our paths have crossed). And any time with the man or his poems is time well spent.

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