Anne Wilkinson's poetry belongs to no specifically native Canadian tradition. Much of her work is teased out in metaphysical fashion, not only with something of the craggy paradoxes of John Donne but also with the witty elegance of Andrew Marvell. Grafted onto this style is a genuine simplicity which often carries echoes of nursery rhymes and fairy tales as well as the pared down structures of the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Elinor Wylie. While this kind of writing is unrelated to movements and developments in Canadian poetry, it is perhaps possible to see Wilkinson's poems as part of that stream in Canadian verse beginning in the 1920s, influenced by T. S. Eliot with some reference to Eliot's emphasis on the metaphysical poets. This particular strain surfaces in some other poets through the twentieth century, though they cannot be seen as a group. Such poets as Leo Kennedy...