Tuesday, September 21, 2010

News at Eleven (Back Page): A seminal moment in this debate

can be traced to an argument between Al Purdy and Harold Town over their never-completed anthology of contemporary Canadian poetry.

Town, commissioned as illustrator, felt that Purdy shouldn’t include his own poems, while Purdy felt entitled to, reasoning that he was a leading Canadian poet. It’s hard not to think now that Town was right. Purdy never maintained that he was compiling a representative anthology, something that had to be a cross-section and, being a cross section, should necessarily include himself. On the contrary, Purdy felt that he should auto-include because he was important.

from The Globe and Mail: Editor, heel thyself

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