SOURCE: Lecker, Robert. “Daphne Marlatt's Poetry.” Canadian Literature 76 (spring 1978): 56-67.

In the following essay, Lecker traces the development of Marlatt's phenomenological aesthetic in her early poetry, from Frames of a Story through Steveston. Lecker draws attention to Marlatt's effort to translate into language the immediacy of consciousness and visual perception, as found in her recurring evocation of the river as a metaphor for purification and release.

It is difficult to read Daphne Marlatt's poetry¹ without seeing the river. Behind each of the books she has published to date, there is a current which flows toward a heightened perception of an immanent world. The current joins each of her works, swelling into the torrent of impressions, sensations, and images which characterize Steveston. Linked to this inherent proclivity for movement is a need for poetic progress: each book can be seen as representing some form of search for an appropriate...