[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 century of his development and ours.

Birney is a man who grew up backwards. He appears to get younger and gayer with every year. (The collection ends with a spatter of concrete and several new love poems.) Also, he is a man who has spent the past thirty years getting out of the things many spend their lives getting into: the University of Toronto, the Army, the CBC, the Chairmanship of his own Creative Writing Department….

[He] has preferred to remain simply a poet, which for Canadians, says Birney, means being "their eternally invisible Stranger."

It has been said, in fact, that Birney is very much at home abroad because he has always been a stranger at home. Certainly...