John Glassco has produced a small number of usually short books, written with considerable gaps over a period stretching from the 1920s to his final writings during the 1970s. His first publication, a surrealist poem called "Conan's Fig," appeared in transition in 1928; his last was a translation of Jean-Charles Harvey's Les Demicivilisés (1934) which appeared in 1982. But, sparse and intermittent though his creation may have been, everything he did had a virtuosity that earned him the respect of Canadian writers of all generations. With skill and versatility he touched on many fields; as he himself once remarked, he was "as much a novelist, anthologist, translator and pornographer" as a poet. He was also a fine memoirist.

Glassco first became known to Canadian readers as a poet, author of The Deficit Made Flesh, which appeared in 1958, and A Point of Sky, published in 1964. His prose works, mostly written...