A Lover's Quarrel by Carmine Starnino
Finalist for The Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction in 2005
More outspoken criticism from the `attack dogs of Canadian Literature’. As we prepare these notes, David Solway’s Director’s Cut has recently ruffled innumerable feathers among the poets. Carmine Starnino is not about to smooth them. A Lover’s Quarrel collects the best of Starnino’s critical writings to date (on a variety of authors ranging from A. M. Klein and P. K. Page to Christian Bok, Tim Lilburn and David McGimpsey). The title essay rounds out the collection and offers an unflinching reappraisal of the state of Canadian poetry.
In an interview with The Danforth Review, Starnino acknowledges:
`I am, at heart, simply a reader of Canadian poetry who is unhappy with the chronic overestimation of certain poets and is trying to bring attention to a number of other poets who I believe deserve more notice. It’s true that it seems to make me, at times, a partisan promoter. But all I’m doing is trusting my instincts. With whatever poetry I read, I trust my delight and I trust my doubts and, in the end, hope that the essays and reviews I write are able to persuasively advocate their bias.’
Already an award-winning poet, Carmine Starnino has also made his mark as a literary critic of great pluck, probity and irreverence. His highly regarded, often highly controversial writings on poetry have enlivened - and often enraged - the Canadian literary scene since they first began appearing in the late 1990s. He has tackled the careers of some of this country’s most notable poets (among them Irving Layton, Michael Ondaatje, Anne Carson, Tim Lilburn, Susan Musgrave, Christopher Dewdney) and done so in prose of great subtlety and style. Indeed, in Starnino’s literary criticism seditiousness and insight are made to live inside sentences that always square their shoulders and draw themselves to their full verbal height. A Lover’s Quarrel culls some of the highlights of Starnino’s dissenting exploits, and includes the never-before-published title essay, an ambitious reassessment of Canadian poetry. For readers unfamiliar with Starnino’s criticism, the release of A Lover’s Quarrel furnishes the perfect opportunity to read one of the few critics in Canada who can speak his mind and speak it well.
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