This volume of poems – previously uncollected and unpublished – by modernist writer Dorothy Livesay is an invaluable addition to the poet’s oeuvre. Editor Dean Irvine has produced a work that will satisfy scholar and general reader alike. Meticulously and judiciously, he has selected among the more than 1,000 poems in the vast Livesay archives and arranged them chronologically by decade. The volume spans the 20th century, from the 1920s to the 1980s, and includes poems from youth through to old age. Readers familiar with Livesay’s work will recognize the thematic and stylistic range represented here. These poems serve to remind the reader of Livesay’s poetic skill and vision, and confirm her importance to our literary and cultural history.

Throughout her life, Livesay was engaged equally by political and personal issues. A communist and social worker, she wrote passionately about the exploitation of workers and the humiliation of poverty. She often foregrounded the female experience in her poems, lamenting the lack of opportunity for and recognition of women writers. She understood the difficult struggle to balance conflicting roles and desires that often forced women writers to sacrifice their work. An adroit stylist, Livesay was adept at both the brief lyric and the long narrative poem. There are examples here of the full range of her output: haiku, lyric, sonnet, dramatic monologue, and documentary poem. The inclusion of several slight pieces does not detract from the selection’s value.

For Livesay, poetry was a necessary and important archive for our times. Always a feminist, some of her richest lyrics celebrate, “This body that delights in aging / secreting layers, edges, ridges / accumulating flesh.” As Irvine shows, her engagement with life through language continued until her death in 1996. The volume is enhanced by a foreword by Miriam Waddington and an afterword by Di Brandt, both poets who appreciate Livesay’s work. Irvine concludes with a critical article detailing the complex process of selecting and editing Livesay’s poetry. He is to be commended for this fine edition of her work.– by Ruth Panofsky, who teaches English at Ryerson Polytechnic University.