M. Travis Lane and Heart on Fist: Essays and Reviews are moving into the spotlight as the subjects of this fascinating Walrus article by Patrick O’Reilly. The article also features insights by Heart on Fist editor Shane Neilson:

“The primary reason for Lane’s obscurity, Neilson argues, is an anti-Maritime, pro-postmodern bias that takes hold when anthologies are compiled. In her essay ‘Contemporary Canadian Verse: The View From Here,’ Lane downplays the role regionalism plays in Canadian poetry, but Neilson’s argument is persuasive. The fact remains that Lane writes a kind of poetry that one almost never associates with post-modernity or experimentation: naturalistic, deliberately metred, ‘beautiful,’ often religious, distinctly Maritime. Lane herself makes these poetic values plain in essays and reviews: ‘sound is inextricably linked to the meaning of the poem,’ ‘meaning of word and grammatical phrase are not irrelevant to artistic intention,’ ’emotion is not a matter of imagery alone; it is, in fact, primarily a matter of rhythm.’ These are practical values, and they suffice for Lane’s poetry and for a persona skeptical of schools, -isms, and theory.”

Continue the article here.

Buy Heart on Fist here.