[The Sad Phoenician] is the latest sequence in a long poem by Robert Kroetsch, tentatively entitled "Field Notes." Earlier segments include "The Ledger" (1975), "Seed Catalogue" (1977), and "How I Joined the Seal Herd" (published in the Seed Catalogue volume). The present volume contains two poems: "The Sad Phoenician" and "The Silent Poet Sequence."

Unlike many contemporary long or serial poems—which seem to be bound together by no more coherent an organizing principle than the fact that they are the product of a single consciousness—"The Sad Phoenician" is identifiably part of a poetic sequence and takes on its fullest meaning when read as the fourth movement in a longer poem. (pp. 6-7)

"Field Notes" is an attempt to find a language for exploring "the imagined real place." Working within a succession of imposed imaginative structures (as the titles reflect, the ledger and the seed catalogue are the organizing...