With Field Notes, Robert Kroetsch brings together nine parts of the long and continuing poem of that name. "Stone Hammer Poem," the introductory section, appeared as the title-piece of a collection in 1975 (Kroetsch's first book of poetry)…. Field Notes is also described on the title-page as "The Collected Poetry of Robert Kroetsch"—though it contains none of the short poems he has published during the same six years.

A preface by Eli Mandel offers a sprightly and acute introduction to the poet Kroetsch or Poet/kroetsch, disclosing this figure with gleeful flourish. It is, as a piece of critical writing, like the Prologue to Pagliacci, part of the act. (p. 36)

[Kroetsch's own address, "For Play and Entrance: The Contemporary Canadian Long Poem," is written] in an aphoristic, non-linear fashion, reminiscent of Susan Sontag, and making wide reference to recently-published long poems in Canada, it will rightly become a...