Description
This is the first of the featured issues of The Malahat Review to be edited only by Robin Skelton. By no means does this make it short on content: National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates has three poems published, and in the segment “16 Canadian Poets,” Elizabeth Brewster, Don Coles, Gary Geddes, Ralph Gustafson, Miriam Waddington, and Tom Wayman all contribute. Also appearing in this segment is Anne Logie, a UVic alumnus who contributes two poems. The front cover is a charcoal rendering of Maxwell Bates, by Myfanwy Pavelic. This ties in to the short sketch of Bates: “Experience and Reality,” written by Robin Skelton, complete with glossy renderings of his paintings in the centerfold. The reviews of criticism, poetry, fiction, and biography are no longer by John Peter alone, but instead feature an array of reviewers. Noteworthy subjects in this section include Sylvia Plath’s Crossing the Water, reviewed by Robin Skelton, and a review of the novel The Hero’s Great Great Great Great Great Grandson by George Cuomo, former instructor at the University of Victoria, who is given a lukewarm appraisal from novelist Leon Rooke.
–Brianne Boehm
