If I try to delineate the character of Robert Finch's sensibility, I find myself wanting to say, perhaps in too large and general a way, that it is a sensibility which aspires to make explicit—but explicit in a way proper to poetry—the Europeanism latent in the Canadian spirit…. The first thing that is striking about Finch is the unity of his sensibility…. Robert Finch has a beautifully coherent and single sensibility, subject and detail, thought and feeling, tone and language, issuing without manipulation from a single organic response. A manner suggestive of coolness and sobriety is constantly capable of surprising us with a kind of subterranean explosiveness, and language, which seems stiff or angular, is in his hands buoyantly mobile and responsive…. (p. 82)

[In "The Statue"] there is not a hint of vacancy nor an unfunctioning line or word throughout. Moreover, the two parts of the...