SOURCE: Ower, John. “Crawford and the Penetrating Weapon.” In The Crawford Symposium, edited by Frank M. Tierney, pp. 33-47. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979.

In the following essay, originally presented at the fifth Symposium of the University of Ottawa Symposia series in 1978, Ower analyzes Crawford's use of the “piercing weapon” as a phallic symbol in her poetry.

In his brilliant pioneering study of Crawford's poetry, James Reaney stresses the architectonic quality of her imagination.¹ He indicates how her work exhibits a visionary system that is in turn expressed through a “syntax” of repeated and modulated images. While Reaney has correctly sketched the broad outlines of Crawford's symbolic schema, much still remains, to be done towards filling in its details. For example, the “leitmotiv” of the penetrating weapon, which is one of Crawford's most significant “structural” images, has yet to receive detailed critical attention. Although not pervasive in the...