Since the 1920s, Alfred Earle Birney has become a venerated literary figure. Throughout his career Birney has done more than most writers to legitimize and consolidate what is often considered a m&eac...
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In the following review, Frye offers a positive review of Birney's first published collection of poetry.
This is a book [David and Other Poems] for those interested in Canadian poetry to buy an...
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In the following review, Bailey discusses Strait of Anian, which was published in 1948.
Of the forty-six poems in this book, twenty-seven are republished from Mr. Birney's earlier collections, ...
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In the following essay, which was originally published in the British Columbia Library Quarterly in 1960, Fredeman offers a critical overview of the first decades of Birney's literary career.
T...
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In the following essay, West discusses Ice Cod Bell or Stone, placing it within the context of the poet's previous works of verse and fiction.
No pomp or poet's pose: just a tall, self-c...
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In the following essay, Colombo offers a positive assessment of Birney's sixth volume of poetry, Near False Creek Mouth.
Let me start with a few sentences from the Revised Edition of Desmond Pa...
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In the following review, Weatherhead writes about Near False Creek Mouth.
About twenty-five years ago, just before the last war, Louis MacNeice wrote:
The sunlight on the garden Hardens and grows cold...
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In the following review, Helwig discusses a collection of Birney's essays about poetry and creative writing that were originally conceived as programs for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation....
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In the following review of Selected Poems 1940-1966, Wilson focuses attention on the punctuation and spelling revisions Birney made to previously published works before including them in this collecti...
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In the following review of Birney's Selected Poems, Carruth criticizes the poet's notational revisions to previously published poems, in which he replaced traditional marks of punctuatio...
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In the following interview from 1976, Birney talks with Bayard and David about the development of his experimental and visual approach to the writing of poetry.
Earle Birney was born in Calgary in 190...
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In the following essay, Aichinger addresses the influence of Birney's extensive travels, political allegiances, and global perspectives on his development as a Canadian poet.
I the Lonely Obser...
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In the following essay, Pollock offers a biographical and critical overview of the first four decades of Birney's literary career.
For the last forty years, Earle Birney has been widely recogni...
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In the following essay, Steven compares revisions of Birney's poems “Transcontinental” and “Man Is a Snow.”
Certain poets display an intense concern for craft throug...
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In the following essay, Woodcock examines parallels between Birney's travel-themed poetry and the journey themes found in the Old English poems “The Wanderer” and “The Seaf...
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In the following essay, McLeod traces Birney's literary treatment of the conflicting themes of irony and affirmation, starting with an examination of the poet's doctoral dissertation, &#...
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In the following essay, Zenchuk traces the introduction and development of Birney's concrete poetry, which combined text and visual elements in ways that were unconventional at the time Birney ...
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In the following essay, Kearns offers an analysis of Birney's poem, “Bear on the Delhi Road.”
Earle Birney's “Bear on the Delhi Road”1 has long been a favouri...
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In the following essay, Latham discusses “From the Hazel Bough,” a poem once described by Birney as the work of his own that he thought most closely approached the level of a masterpiece...
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In the following essay, McDonald examines theme, structure, and perspective in Birney's travel poetry, noting that he was among the first literary figures to champion cultural diversity and the...
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In the following essay, which first appeared in The Literary Review of Canada in 1996, Noonan reflects on the half-century career of Earle Birney as a literary figure and cultural ambassador for Canad...
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Critical Essay by Bruce Nesbitt
"Revolution is revolution", Leon Trotsky noted in his autobiography, "only because it reduces all contradictions to the alternative of life or deat...
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Critical Essay by D. G. Jones
[The Collected Poems of Earle Birney is an important publication.] Here we find two or three dozen of our most eloquent poems, plus Birney's summing up of half a c...
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Critical Essay by Sam Solecki
[I don't particularly like either of Birney's two novels] yet I find that each has a facet which is of real interest. Down the Long Table, for example, desp...
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Critical Essay by Warren Tallman
There is [a] personal factor that enters into Birney's relations with the west coast Modernists, indeed with the world at large. I [mention] his touchiness, whi...
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Critical Essay by George Woodcock
[Ghost in the Wheels] is obviously Birney's own selection of the poems he likes best—"none I think great and none I hope bad," as he wryly...
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(Alfred) Earle Birney
