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, “Chaucer's Irony.”

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 began experimenting with them.

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.

In the following essay, Steven compares revisions of Birney's poems “Transcontinental” and “Man Is a Snow.”

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.

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 Seafarer.”

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 disadvantages of social and economic inequity worldwide.

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.

In the following essay, Pollock offers a biographical and critical overview of the first four decades of Birney's literary career.

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.

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.

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 punctuation with unconventional spacing.

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 collection.

In the following essay, Kearns offers an analysis of Birney's poem, “Bear on the Delhi Road.”

In the following review, Bailey discusses Strait of Anian, which was published in 1948.

In the following essay, Colombo offers a positive assessment of Birney's sixth volume of poetry, Near False Creek Mouth.

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 Canada.

In the following review, Weatherhead writes about Near False Creek Mouth.

[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 adds. (p. 95) Birney accompanies these poems with a brief preface, in which—as always—he notes that critics have misunderstood him and have not allowed for the inventive element in poems that—like "David"—sound personal—have not, in other words, reckoned with the difference between the poet in t...

In the following review, Frye offers a positive review of Birney's first published collection of poetry.

[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 To...

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.

"Revolution is revolution", Leon Trotsky noted in his autobiography, "only because it reduces all contradictions to the alternative of life or death". And so Gordon Saunders, the haunted "summer-time rebel" of Down the Long Table, emerges as a failed revolutionary, unable to accept the ultimate implications of his evolving commitments…. [The] novel forces each reader to challenge his or her own abilities to understand—and withstand—the social fo...

[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, despite certain structural flaws which Birney has acknowledged, is still an interesting novel if only because of the quality of the insight it provides into the politics of the Thirties. My response to Turvey is divided in a similar way. Turvey himself is an almost moronic character. In The Creative Writer Birney describes him as a "dumb...

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, which stems from a deeply experienced supersensitivity, the source doubtless of his art. Generous, democratic, open-handed to other poets he certainly is, traits of the eclectic man. But he is also the isolato, the loner, and for this reason the wanderer. Able to draw on a wide range of influences, he is not inclined to join in, and much of his p...