SOURCE: "Bill Bissett," in Canadian Writers and Their Works, Vol. 8, edited by Robert Lecker, Jack David, and Ellen Quigley, ECW Press, 1992, pp. 17-109.

In the following excerpt, Jirgens places Bissett's work in the tradition of English Romantic poetry.

bissett can be thought of as a late Romantic maverick. In many ways, his writing seems anachronistic. On the one hand, it displays structural manipulations that are typical of the twentieth century. On the other hand, it embraces a timeless transcendental philosophy.

From a philosophical viewpoint, it could be argued that bissett is working in the tradition of Romantic writers such as Blake, Shelley, and perhaps Yeats. Like his Romantic predecessors, bissett values individualism and original imagination. On one level, the distinctive variety of approaches in bissett's writing can be seen as an affirmation of his will as an individual.

David Perkins, in his English Romantic Writers, discusses the qualities...