SOURCE: "P. K. Page: The Chameleon and the Centre," in The Malahat Review, No. 45, January, 1978, pp. 169–95.

American educator Rooke contributed to and later edited the literary periodical The Malahat Review. In the following excerpt, she provides a survey of Page's verse and considers the influence of Sufi philosophy on the poet's works.

P. K. Page is Canada's finest poet. I begin here on dangerous ground, without any illusion that the mere surveyor's report which is to follow can prove it safe. But it has seemed to me this judgment ought to appear in print. The work itself is secure in any case; though not extensive by a literal measurement of books placed end to end, it has earned for P. K. Page a high reputation amongst Canadian poets and the Order of Canada, a recent tribute to her achievement. By another sort of measure the expanse of her...