The Canadian Poet's Predicament

Abstract

I suppose that you can be more and also less self-conscious about this sort of thing. Part of the predicament I am about to describe is that no one seems to know, no one seems to be able to tell you, whether you should be self-conscious or unconscious about the craft of poetry, whether you should really tackle literary criticism as a help or intuitively arrive at the same goal. I will admit that when I was even younger than I am now I thought that literary critics were big bad wolves who ate you up, but I've changed my mind about them since. However, here, in this essay I'd like to try out self-consciousness about the whole problem of writing poetry in Canada just to see if it gets you anywhere at all.