In an unassuming way Tom Marshall has established a quiet but firm presence in contemporary Canadian literature. His poetry is meditative, sometimes calmly ironic at his own expense, yet moving to a clearly articulated sense of self and place, patriotic without being jingoistic. In the same way his criticism, while avoiding the overly polemical, persuasively expresses perceptive insight into individual authors, together with a well-conceived appreciation of an author's place not only within the native tradition but also within the larger scheme of literature.

Thomas Archibald Marshall, the son of Douglas Wood worth and Helen Kennedy Marshall, was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, "that roaring border outpost of vulgarity," as he has described it. He spent some of his childhood in the United States--mostly in Joplin, Missouri, and Memphis, Tennessee--as his father, a chemical engineer, worked on scientific projects there during World War II.

In 1961 he received his...