Trent University - Daily News

A.J.M. Smith:
Legendary impact on Canadian poetry

"It was the publication of Arthur’s first comprehensive Canadian anthology, The Book of Canadian Poetry, in 1943, which immediately established him in the position of authority which he has ever since maintained among Canadian critics. He gave shape to what had been before him an unmapped waste poetic land, and while avoiding the excessive praise which other anthologists had lavishly applied to their mostly mediocre contemporaries, gave everyone a proper recognition in their time and place." ~ F.R. Scott (in an address given at a banquet held in honour of A.J.M. Smith at Michigan State University in 1976)

Many members of the Trent community will recognize the name of A.J.M. Smith. Perhaps students will associate it with classes they have had on the bottom floor of the Bata Library, in the room that bears his name. Board members will also link the name to that location, as the A.J.M. Smith Room is home to the meetings of the Board of Governors.

However, how many people stop to ask who this man was and why we have such a beautiful, riverside room named in his honour?

There are those at Trent who know the answers to these questions, of course, and English Professor Gordon Johnston is one of them. He not only knew A.J.M. Smith, but also has written about his work and feels Mr. Smith played a crucial role in the development of Canadian poetry.

"He was the one who created our sense of Canadian poetry, in many ways," says Prof. Johnston. "He’s a crucial figure in thinking about Canadian poetry."

Prof. Johnston explains that Mr. Smith was involved, as a student, with writing and editing poetry at McGill. Part of the first group of modernists, Mr. Smith founded and ran the Literary Supplement of the McGill Daily and then the McGill Fortnightly Review.

In the 1930s Mr. Smith worked with Frank (F.R.) Scott on a collection of poems by himself, Mr. Scott, Leo Kennedy, A.M. Klein, E.J. Pratt and Robert Finch. This was called New Provinces and was published in 1936 by Macmillan.

Mr. Smith’s first anthology of Canadian poetry, The Book of Canadian Poetry, was published in 1943. This volume, says Prof. Johnston, was what gave Canadians the first clear sense of themselves, poetically.

"All prior anthologies of Canadian poetry weren’t critical. They were perhaps patriotic or sentimental - all were published at a popular level. This was the first critical intelligence in Canadian poetry that said there were poems of value out there. He used standards of excellence in selecting the poems," says Prof. Johnston. "At that time Northrop Frye did a yearly review of Canadian poetry for the Uof T Quarterly. Frye's review of the anthology is a defining moment in our poetry."

Prof. Johnston says some critics have accused Mr. Smith of having a narrow focus in selecting pieces for his anthologies, but he disagrees. "I know he included poems that weren’t necessarily to his own liking, but which he felt were of high quality," he says.

This opinion was formed through personal conversations and meetings with Mr. Smith. Prof. Johnston and Prof. Michael Peterman spent time with Mr. Smith in the late 1970s, when Mr. Smith decided to donate his library and papers to Trent University.

"He decided to donate his collection of Canadian poetry and his papers to Trent because this was a serious place for Canadian Studies and he liked the University," recalls Prof. Johnston. "We went to East Lansing (Michigan) to visit and look through his materials. We had a wonderful time with him. He had a very sharp mind and was full of stories and opinions and anecdotes."

A.J.M. (Arthur James Marshall) spent most of his teaching career in the English Department at Michigan State University, although he spent considerable time in Canada during the summers, and was a visiting professor at many Canadian university campuses. In addition to the books already noted, he was prolific, and published five books of poetry (News of the Phoenix in 1943, A Sort of Ecstasy in 1954, Collected Poems in 1962, Poems New and Collected in 1967 and The Classic Shade in 1978), and numerous anthologies. Some of the best known include The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English and French (1960), The Blasted Pine: An Anthology of Satire, Invective and Disrespectful Verse Chiefly by Canadian Writers (1957, with F.R. Scott), and 100 Poems (1965).

A man who opened up a new vision of Canadian poetry, and perhaps of the nation itself, A.J.M. Smith is a larger-than-life figure in Canadian literature. It is a privilege to have his entire Canadian collection and his papers here at Trent, housed in display cases in the A.J.M. Smith Room and in the Archives.

Photos courtesy of the Trent University Archives.

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Last updated January 3, 2003