[In recent discussions of Klein's work, his radical poems] have either been ignored or else dismissed as having no literary value. On the whole they have been considered as a regrettable and troubling episode in an otherwise virtuous literary life. (p. 31)
My own view is that the radical poems are still fresh, interesting, and alive, not merely as biographical data but as literary works. Although I share many of the values which these poems assert, my interest is not based on a nostalgic hankering after the slogans of the thirties but grows out of genuine curiosity about how Canadian poets responded to the revolutionary temper of that time. I would like to show what Klein's radical poems were like, and how these poems—far from being merely topical expressions—are firmly rooted in Klein's double tradition, Jewish and Canadian. These two traditions were far more important in Klein's development and in the shaping of his radical poems than anything he ever learned from Eliot, Auden, Spender, or Lewis.
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