SOURCE: Fredeman, W. E. “Earle Birney: Poet.” In Critical Views on Canadian Writers: Earle Birney, Bruce Nesbitt, pp. 107-14. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., 1974.

In the following essay, which was originally published in the British Columbia Library Quarterly in 1960, Fredeman offers a critical overview of the first decades of Birney's literary career.

The eve of publication of the Selected Poems of Earle Birney¹ offers a convenient opportunity for re-evaluating the poetic output of one of British Columbia's—indeed, one of Canada's—best known and most highly praised literary figures. Coming rather late to a literary career—after an apprenticeship of hack work, graduate study, odd jobs, and miscellaneous teaching, at the Universities of California, Utah, Toronto, and British Columbia—Birney, at the age of thirty-eight, was suddenly catapulted to national recognition with the publication of David and Other Poems in 1942. The combined forces of a variegated background...