SOURCE: "Sadness and Light," in Canadian Forum, Vol. LXXIV, No. 846, January-February, 1996, pp. 46-7.

In the following review of Coming to Canada, Hamelin praises Shields's poetry, stating that in it readers hear the same poignant voice of her novels.

It is difficult to read Carol Shields' collection of poetry, Coming to Canada, without preconceptions; by now, we know her voice well and find ourselves looking for glimmers of Daisy Goodwill and shades of Mary Swann. And in fact the poems in this retrospective—which includes selections from Others (1972), Intersect (1974) and an earlier volume also entitled Coming to Canada (1992), as well as 33 new ones—have the same honest, unpretentious intensity as Shields' best fiction. Shields excels at character and description, and many of the poems are like little novels, tiny scenes held up to the light.

In his introduction, Christopher Levenson expresses surprise that the poems are not "as full...