[Many poets of the sixties] seem to be becoming somewhat fatigued by cerebral and mythopoeic poetry. There is a return to Imagism; and with that return lyricism inevitably canters alongside. (p. 33)

Of all contemporary Canadian poets, Milton Acorn is most at home as a part of this development…. As he describes it, he grew into poetry the hard, unschooled way:

I started to write in iambic patterns…. Iambic was theoretically based on the 'natural' rhythms of the English language…. But among the great majority of people living on the North American continent the speech patterns (stress and rhythm) have changed. Iambic no longer fits.

Acorn first began to break with the iambic pattern from listening to seamen talk…. His aim was "a line that flowed more in terms of their own natural idiom". [He] began to grow away from the iambic pattern, while yet maintaining a unity of...