SOURCE: Forbes, Alexander M. “Transformations.” Canadian Literature, no. 144 (spring 1995): 177-79.

In the following review, Forbes discusses the theme of transformation in Short Talks and notes that Carson's narrative style varies between standard prose, essays, and prose poems.

In Forests of the Medieval World, Don Coles records ordered transformations. In these transformations, human beings, as individuals and as members of society, grow toward the achievement of a potential within themselves: there is an “honourable link” between the past and the future (“Basketball Player and Friends”). Aristotle is never mentioned in Forests of the Medieval World, but he does not need to be, for nothing medieval can grow without him. For Coles, the ideas of potentiality and entelechy, introduced by Aristotle, remain important concepts for understanding the growth of human beings. People develop as forests do, from previously encoded seeds.

In “Remembering Henty,” Coles identifies the contribution of unconscious promptings...