Richard Vallance
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Vallance Review 35, July 2004
Richard Doiron, Canada's Poet in the Talking Circle for Peace
Richard Doiron's Biography and Literary Background
as a Canadian Poet and Author
By the tender age of 14, young Richard would search for imaginative ways to spend his days. He might be found wandering in the nearby woods, with pencil and paper, where, with his pet dog by his side, he would spend hours committing his thoughts to paper. So started his lifelong métier as a writer and a journal keeper. His personal journal/diary, addressed to his only child, his daughter Melanie Joy Doiron, born in 1982, is over 30,000 pages long. Richard, who loves to share his personal thoughts, feelings and reflections with his private journals, addresses his poetry to the world at large, a very fortunate turn of events for humankind, as we shall presently see.
Richard is fond of characterizing his work in distinctly mystical terms, appropriately enough, given the spiritual themes common to his writing. Says he, "I don't understand the phenomenon. I just have to get the words out. If you're a poet, it's not a choice. You're on call every day." As for his daily workload as a writer and a poet, he avers, "If I have to spend more than 15 or 20 minutes on something, I leave it." His muse? Of her he has this to add, "When it comes to that, I'm just along for the ride."
In his home province, New Brunswick, Richard Doiron has acquired quite the reputation as a poet and a man of peace. And he has had the distinction of being published, by invitation, alongside the Dalai Lama and Twelve Nobel Peace Prize Winners.
In 1993, Dr. Emily Yau, Founder of the East-West Literary Foundation, a foundation designed to bring peace to East and West, read his work at the World Congress of Poetry & Cultures, at old Lincoln University, San Francisco. Richard Doiron has translated 21 of Dr. Yau's poems into French. Dr. Yau, who has often published Richard Doiron's poetry, has made the latter a permanent member of the East-West Literary Foundation.
Publishing History:
Richard Doiron's first poem was published in an Ontario newspaper in 1970. Subsequently, he published his first book of poetry in 1978, followed by a second in 1991, and a third in 1999. On July 17th, 2002, he launched his fourth volume, My Prayer for Peace [1].
This small, yet compelling anthology has been honoured with nominations for two of Canada's most prestigious literary awards, the Governor General's Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize, valued at $40,000 CAN or about $32,000 US.
A New Brunswick newspaper recently reported that "Richard Doiron's not so much a poet as he's a force of nature. The words have come bursting out of him and for some 40 years he's been trying to keep up with the torrent and get them down on paper." Since 1964, Richard Doiron has composed some 20,000 poems, plays and works in prose in English and his native language, French. Of his poems, over 3,000 are sonnets.
We'll Review 2 of Richard's Sonnets for the Summer of 2004
photo Creation wall mural, Montréal, Québec
© by Louis-Dominique Genest 2002 [2]
My World of Paints
My world of paints I splatter, like a child,
Across the blue, in patterns big and bold:
The colours run, they're seen as running wild,
And here we're lost when things are uncontrolled!
Great globs of green now fall upon the trees;
Upon the seas, the colours now run blue;
There's yellows flung, that bring me to my knees,
The likes mere gold could never ever do!
There's blacks and whites and colours in-between,
Like browns and reds and mixtures not so clear,
Arrayed in rows the likes they've never seen,
And yet each one the child in me holds dear!
My world of paints I fling across the sky;
Ask children, all, they'll know the reasons why!
photo composite, flowers, © by Richard Vallance 2002-2003
from Canadian Spirit Photos [2]
Of Colours All
The bluest blue's the blueness of the sky;
The greenest green is granted to the grass;
The whitest white is in your loving eye,
The pupil there, to see it come to pass.
The reddest red is in the sun above;
The pinkest pink is in your rosy cheek;
The grayest gray is also in your love,
Which leaves me weak, unable, then, to speak.
I say to you of colours, far and wide,
Each one's in place, pursuant to a prod,
And none is best, and none's to cast aside,
But that you'd stop and take it up with God.
Of colours, all, no better and no worse,
And here they are, as things we can't reverse.
© by Richard Doiron 2004 [3]
Actually, it just seems natural to me to review these sonnets as a duet:
It just so happens I naturally prefer these two sonnets of Richard Doiron's over practically all others of his I have had the pleasure of reading from his astonishing repertoire because, as it turns out, if you will pardon the jeux de mots (play on words), Richard and I have a great deal in common as Canadian poets. For instance, we are both strongly influenced by the great awe-inspiring vistas of Canada's natural landscapes, as multi-coloured, multi-varied and multi-cultural as they are.
1. The Influence of Canada's Wild Natural Environment on Canadian Poets:
In previous Vallance Reviews devoted to three of our national sonneteers, two historical and one contemporary, I have laid particular stress on Canadian poets' pronounced historical penchant for intimate personal involvement in our harsh, yet astonishingly beautiful natural environment [4]. In his quasi-confessional interview with Sara Russell in this issue of Poetry Life & Times, Richard Doiron touches upon more than one characteristic trait common to so many Canadian writers and poets. And in the biographical sketch above, we have already seen how Richard used to haunt the woods around his hometown as a young boy, in the company of his pet dog. These early life experiences of his are uncannily like my own. From the tender age of 6 or 7, I too was fond of wandering off, unsupervised by my parents, who instinctively seemed to understand my boyhood thirst as a Canadian for natural solitude. I would explore nearby fields and hills or wander on down to local streams, or even off into the more mysterious woodlands to be found surrounding us everywhere we lived during my childhood. There is indeed much more to our habits of seeking solitude, even as youths, than meets the eye.
Many a Canadian writer and poet, not the least that thoughtful and sensitive soul, Archibald Lampman, Canada's greatest sonneteer of the 19th. Century, has been, as it were, inexorably tugged by the heartstrings to explore, almost in spite of himself or herself, that vast mysterious wilderness world which is called Canada. Another contemporary Canadian poet with a similar yearning for the solitudes of the great outdoors is Eric Linden of British Columbia, whose brilliant Canadian sonnet, "Silent in the Wilderness" we reviewed just last month [5].
2. Canada's central Role in the Struggle for World Peace:
That being said, many modern Canadian poets are in a personal search for the quest for peace in the world. As modern Canadian poets and sonneteers, Richard Doiron and I also share a keen interest in the ongoing struggle for World Peace. This too is no mere happenstance, as Canada is a nation in the vanguard of the international peace movement of the early Third Millennium. Indeed, Canada has been a political leader in the ongoing struggle for World Peace ever since Prime Minister Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957, and even before. Numerous Canadian writers, novelists and poets alike, historical and contemporary, have also spearheaded the Peace movement.
3. The Amerindian Heritage of the Americas:
But we have only scratched the surface so far. Richard Doiron gives intimations of another vein deeply rooted in the Canadian poetic psyché, when of himself he declares,
My Native friends, the Mi'kmaq-Maliseet Nations had already published [a poem of mine] ... about peace, as it speaks of consultation and a meeting of the minds (italics mine). The "Indians" had their "Talking Stick," which was passed to everyone in the "Circle," and this was where issues were resolved.
That Richard, though a non-Amerindian, should so often find himself drawn for his primary inspiration to the ancient spiritual traditions of the First Nations folk comes as no surprise at all to me, as a fellow Canadian poet and sonneteer. Here again, not only has Richard Doiron written countless poems and sonnets characteristically dedicated to our First Nations, who by birthright are the true natives of the North and South American land mass entire, but he also truly shares with them their profound reverence for the natural world, humanity's mother.
Granted that he, like myself, is "shaganash" ("ghost" or "hairy faced" or European), and not Amerindian, the astonishing thing is that so many Canadian poets, historical and contemporary alike, and of both Amerindian and of European extraction, have been magnetically drawn to compose such a vast repertoire of poems securely rooted in Amerindian values and traditions. Canada has seen hundreds of poems and sonnets alike focussing exclusively on the Amerindian culture and lifestyle, on their issues and concerns, on their dreadful historical losses at the hands of the European invaders, and on their astonishingly tenacious spiritual pride, which no invader has ever really managed to snuff out, when it comes down to the crunch. The key then is this indomitable spirit of our Amerindian forefathers, who are the arbiters and spokespersons of "the silence", by which we Canadian poets mean the silence of the wilderness, inhabited by countless little Manitous, all the children of The Great Manitou, otherwise known to the world at large as The Great Spirit. All this and more Richard Doiron faithfully acknowledges in his poem, THE TALKING CIRCLE, where he goes straight to the heart of the seeming paradox of the pursuit for Peace, as he invokes this primeval prayer:
Do you hear the silence?
The silence is the secret.
The secret is sacred.
Because of the Circle we have words.
With our words, we break the silence.
Breaking the silence releases
The secrets.
This is how the mysteries
Are revealed.
In 2001, as a result of Richard Doiron's dedication to the lasting spirit of Amerindian culture in his poetry, of which "The Talking Circle" is a symbolic exemplar, Chief Robert Levy, of Big Cove, N.B,'s largest reserve, made Richard Doiron an Honorary Mi'kmaq [6]. The poem's translucent simplicity reveals one of the key touchstones of Richard Doiron's poetic inspiration. The "Talking Circle" is one amongst so many spiritual wellsprings of the World's longing for peace, and of the urgent need for all humankind's active participation, or as we Canadians would say, participaction, in the struggle for Peace, however elusive it may seem.
Springboards to Peace:
Multiculturalism in Canadian Literature and Poetry
The Recto Side of the Coin
The significance of the socio-political struggle for peace and for human rights in Canadian history cannot be underestimated. Unlike our often tragically misguided neighbour to the South, a nation which seems rather too inclined to think "might is right" and all too often to act on that principle, Canada is a nation loathe to espouse such "ideals". This is partially owing to our very sparse population in such an immense land mass (the second largest nation on Earth). This phenomenon naturally engenders a strong need for socio-cultural interdependence amongst Canadians of all cultures, races, religious beliefs and immigrant origins.
While our official languages are English and French, Canada is a multi-cultural and multi-national amalgam, a small microcosmic cross-section of the entire population of the world assembled in one huge country. Canada is, as it were, a land of equal opportunities for people of all ethnic and national origins; this explains our unusually generous long-standing immigration policies.
This also helps shed light on the vividly multi-coloured and multinational character of Canadian literature, not to say the least on our historical poetry traditions. This trend, however, has manifested itself strongly only since the 1970's, when waves upon waves of immigrants from all nations began by and large to supplant the original immigrant population of mostly British and French settlers. While this historical background may at first appear to be incidental to the quality of Canlit and Canadian poetry, it is in fact one of the most critical characteristics of our national literature, setting it largely apart from the "melting pot" amalgam of American literature, which has traditionally been (at least until very recently) almost exclusively limited to English [7].
The Verso Side of the Coin
On the other hand -- and here Canadian Literature traditionally shares this telling vein of inspiration with American Literature -- Amerindian oral and written traditions have always played a central and defining role in the poetry of both Canada and the United States. That much is clear. Amerindian-inspired literature and poetry is a transborder and transnational phenomenon, breaking down the artificial "national" distinctions between these two great nations so characteristic of their recent histories subsequent to the European invasions. Indeed, one may even go so far as to assert that Amerindian literature and poetry breaks down barriers between all the nations of the Americas, North, Central and South, whether these literatures originate in English or Spanish [7].
The primordial aboriginal quality of poetry inspired by Amerindian culture can and does tend to break down artificial barriers between nations, and seems to really encourage the drive towards World Peace. Based as it is on the Sacred Ceremony of the Sweat Lodge and the Sacred Circle of human communication through the Vision Quest, as embraced by all Amerindian nations without exception, regardless of the huge diversities of language and culture obtaining amongst them, Richard Doiron's "The Talking Circle" serves as a bell weather to inspire the Nations of the World to come together and form a truly international "Talking Circle". Are we now at long last on the threshold of really exciting political growth potentials for this spiritual phenomenon enhancing open-minded intercommunion between the nations in the Twenty-First Century? It is devoutly to be desired.
It is but a small, though intuitively induced, step from Richard Doiron's reveillee for peace to the even more universally expansive and heartfelt spiritual message of the two "Colour" sonnets we review here. These two sonnets, which to my mind, are perhaps at the heart of Richard Doiron's poetic inspiration, are in one breath his impassioned cry for world peace and his celebration of the powerful creative forces of love embracing all of humanity, so typical of the Amerindian "Talking Circle", as indeed of the Karmic Buddhist aura surrounding Robin Ouzman Hislop's, Karma and Bhuwan Thapaliya's Hindu message for peace in his poem, Our Nepal, Our Pride, previously reviewed in the March 2004 Vallance Review. However diverse the spiritual wellsprings for the inspiration driving these three poets hailing from Canada, Nepal and the United Kingdom, they all serve to reinforce the "medium is the message", where the medium is the rising tide of the Peaceable Kingdom in early Third Millennium international poetry, and the message is World Peace. In the editorial of the latest issue of SONNETTO POESIA, Vol. 3 no. 3, Summer 2004, I quoted a similar sentiment expressed by none other than John Donne (1572-1631), who in his Meditations had this to say:
...all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators (italics mine)...
As I then reflected, I repeat, "I could not have said it better myself".
Not insignificantly, in the same issue, I deliberately chose to co-feature Esther Cameron, the prestigious Jewish American poet and peace activist alongside her Canadian cousin, Richard Doiron. From the perspective of Esther's own deeply rooted religious beliefs and traditions expressed in her poetry, the impetus towards international peace is spearheaded, but this time from her own distinct "source" of poetic inspiration, as it were. There is more. Another widely published and publicized American poet, herself an Amerindian, Sondra Ball, is the Editor of one of our sister e-zines, Autumn Leaves (USA), in which you will again find innumerable examples of poetry, much of it Amerindian, inspired by the movement for world peace. Should we be surprised? We should not. For Sondra Ball is also a Quaker.
What then is the creative ground common to the poetical opus of all these poets I have cited and the two sonnets we review here? These sonnets, to my mind, not only broadly hint at a creative wellspring shared by all these poets, but they also archetypically typify the Creative spirit underlying the incoming tide of "Poetry for Peace" now sweeping the World.
No World of Gray is Ours, This World of Colours All
I will be brief and delve straight to the heart of the matter as I focus my looking glass on these two exquisitely nuanced sonnets of Richard Doiron. Let us take a closer look at these in turn.
Marc Chagall, "L'Ange bleu"
My World of Paints:
Typifying himself as a poet, Richard Doiron has this to say:
Asking a poet why he started writing poetry, it seems to me, would rather be like asking a cloud why it pours rain. I am not a reader, never studied literature much, but I always seemed able to write. I think it fair to say I needed to write for expression of self. Poetry, the forms, seemed to naturally evolve. I write spontaneously.
By the time I had absorbed some of the delicious nuances of this amazing sonnet, I realized only too acutely that here I was in the presence of a truly multi-layered poem, where the imagery plays like light on the reader's mind and heart, "boldly going where no one has gone before", by hearkening right back to his or her own childhood experiences. The sonnet vividly calls to my mind William Wordsworth's immortal lyrics:
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Richard Doiron's sonnet casts itself as a lucent latter day image of Wordsworth's lyrics. Yet it is richer still, more nuanced, more vivid than even the Lake Poet's invocation to the spirit of the Child, the same Jesus himself so intuitively revered. Richard has managed to paint in his fantastically vivid canvas the sheer delight any 5 or 6 year old child experiences when he or she splashes paints helter-skelter all over a piece of paper, creating a picture to be gleefully flashed before his or her parents' astonished eyes. Likewise, the parent, and the child as parent, when once he or she has grown to adulthood, experiences vicariously all over the same thrill of dabbling in finger paints, only this time in memory. Yet how very vivid the memories are! -- much more so than most of the ghostly memories of our childhood that poignantly haunt us as adults, as we nostalgically long for the lost Eden of childhood. I shouldn't be surprised in the least if some readers of Richard's wee finger-painting masterpiece were in fact inspired to dabble yet again in this long-lost fine art! What the heck, why not? If you like, let yourself go. Let it be. Just do it. And if any of our readers does feel inspired to splash some paints all over a piece of paper, feel free to send us your childlike masterpieces, and we'll be delighted to share them with the world! For surely this is one of the true paths towards peace, the spontaneous sharing of emotions poured out in paints.
But there is more. Is this sonnet not also the very expression, the fountainhead of the Act of Creation itself, at the childlike "hands" of God? I for one believe so. For anyone who has ever had the exquisite pleasure of listening to Franz Joseph Haydn's fabulous Oratorio, Die Schöpfung = The Creation [8], the "sentiment", the sheer sense of wonder and awe at the miracle that is Creation fairly leaps from every single delicious verse of this sonnet. What more need I venture to say? In a word, I adore it. The colours fairly sing. I would even go so far as to suggest to the reader to listen to Haydn's Creation while reading the sonnet. The experience is bound to be, if you will pardon the expression, "a mind blower". To facilitate this experience, allow me to suggest you visit the following WEB site, Rainer's Midi Musicbox. Click on the drop-down menu and select, "Die Himmel erzählen" (The Heavens are telling), to listen to an exquisite MIDI rendition of this chorus from Haydn's Oratorio.
Once you have had the pleasure of reading this lovely sonnet (perhaps even to the accompaniment of Haydn's exquisite chorus), I hope you will agree it is all at once a welling forth of poetic Imagination fired from the crucible of personal creativity and a distillation in mere human language of the Act of Creation itself. As such, it is a beacon to humanity, a poem which leaps straight to the heart of the poet's source of creativity, as typified by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in Chapter 13 of his seminal work of poetry criticism, the Biographia Literaria [9], where he triumphantly asserts, very probably for the first time in literary history:
On the imagination, or esemplastic power.
The imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.
The poet, any real poet, as it were, mirrors God. God is the primary Agent of Creation; His is the Act of Creation through the primal agency of His, the quintessential primary imagination; ours is the secondary imagination. He is the fountainhead, the source of all Creation, hence of all creative acts. Every great poet throughout history, without exception, from Homer to Sappho, from Horace to Vergil, from Shakespeare to Milton, from Coleridge to Keats, all alike, each in his own way, is a mouthpiece and channel of "the Voice of the Almighty". We are, in a word, the little arbiters of God's secondary imagination(s). Each one of us, as poet, speaks the language of God, each in his or her own way. Each is His spokesperson, one ray of light from the Sun. God is the primeval White, his are the Primary Colours.
Of Colours All:
In light of this, is not Richard's Doiron's second sonnet featured here a prime illustration of his own colourful and richly inspired life? If, says he, if you'd only pause and "smell the roses", as the saying goes, "you'd stop and take it up with God." This is Richard's credo of the Garden of Eden, the verdant place to where his spirit retires for his profoundest inspiration. For Richard, as for us, ours are the colours we, the poets, the painters, splash across His world canvas. The notion is particularly Blakean in its primal innocence. Is not Richard Doiron's exquisite little sonnet, "Of Colours All", so very reminiscent as it is of John Keats' masterful sonnet, “Blue! ‘Tis the life of heaven, - ” (reviewed in Vallance Review 23, July 2003), his own inimitable expression of the primeval Light that informs his own small human soul? I dare say it is. As such, this truly delightful sonnet cannot help but shed its loving light on all whose eyes are lavished with its colours all.
Likewise, Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his Defence of Poetry: Part the First (1821), celebrates the human act of creativity all great poets embrace with such gusto and spirit, when he exults:
§164 The imagination beholding the beauty of this order, created it out of itself according to its own idea: the consequence was empire, and the reward everliving fame. §165 These things are not the less poetry quia carent vate sacro (i.e., "because they lack a sacred poet"). They are the episodes of that cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of men. § The Past, like an inspired rhapsodist, fills the theatre of everlasting generations with their harmony.
I could not have said it better myself. Neither, I trust, could have Samuel Tayler Coleridge, nor John Keats, in his equally colourful sonnet, " 'Blue! .... ", nor for that matter Richard Doiron, in these two sonnets which so vividly spring to life with a child's imagery breathing its life into the dullish mind and heart of the "adult" poet. Thus is the handiwork of our one and only sublimest Creator of all so exquisitely expressed through the mirrors of our secondary imaginations, where his Grace and Joy must needs shine through to the extent we let it in.
Richard Doiron happily echoes this same sentiment, when in response to Sara Russell's rhetorical question, he replies, as only a poet can:
How does one define a good lightning bolt, or a good rainbow, or a good rain? What is poetry in the first place? I kind of think that "good" poetry is what people like, what they relate to, what the writer feels good about having written... To paraphrase the great Native American prayer, I might say this: "So that at the end of it, I may walk away without shame." Poetry has a life of its own. How alive is it? Well, how many does it reach? Does it only reach a few? Why is that? How many "good" poets, such as Dickinson, for example, were only known for their wonder after they were passed on? I think "good" poetry would see the poet validated in his/her lifetime. On the other hand, does "good" poetry infer a wide audience? Is that necessary? I think it may very well be the stuff of locality as well as the stuff of globe. [10]
At the risk of sounding tedious, I again assert, I could not have said it better myself.
On one last note, I should like you all to know that I was delighted to honour Richard Doiron's home page, with the distinction of winning the Prix Poesie's laissez-faire Award March 2004.
© by Richard Vallance, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, June 25 2004. I gratefully acknowledge the editorial assistance of Richard Doiron, Moncton, New Brunswick, Helga Ross of Newmarket, Ontario & Eric Linden, Penticton, B.C., Canada
REFERENCES & NOTES:
[1] My prayer for peace, © by Richard Doiron, 2002. ISBN-1-894372-18-2, is published by Dreamcatcher Publishing of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.
[2] Photos source: Vallance, Richard, Genest, Louis-Dominique & Genest, Colette. Canadian Spirit Photos = les Photos éthérées canadiennes. Las Vegas, NV.: Kedco Studios, © 2004.&
ISBN 1-878431-48-X
[3] These two sonnets were previously published in SONNETTO POESIA (Canada) ISSN 1705-4524. Vol. 3 no. 3 Summer = l'été 2004, page 4 Canada page 2.
"Of Colours All" was also published in Richard Doiron's 4th. book of poetry, my prayer for peace. Saint John, New Brunswick: Dreamcatcher Publishing Inc., First Edition, © 2002. 60 pp. ISBN 1-894372-18-12
[4] Cf. in particular the these Vallance Reviews, all directly referenced from The Cumulative Index to the Vallance Review, viz.:
4.1 Vallance Review 6, February 2002, Archibald Lampman, "Winter Uplands"
4.2 Vallance Review 9, May 2002, Frederick George Scott, "Another Rugged Canadian Sonnet, 'The Laurentians'"
4.3 Vallance Review 34, June 2004, Eric Linden, "Steeped in Boreal Nature"
[5] See notes & references 4.3 above
[6] The Mi'kmaq (or Micmac) are an Amerindian tribe (or nation) native to Nova Scotia, the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec, Prince Edward Island, and the eastern half of New Brunswick. By 1630 a Micmac band also inhabited southwestern Newfoundland.
[7] Fortunately, however, for the past decade or so, the influx of Spanish language literature has been on the rapid ascendant in America; so there is some hope that the historical quagmire of the "melting pot" may at last begin to melt down.
[8] Franz Joseph Haydn, The Creation, an Oratorio (1798). It is noteworthy that Ludwig van Beethoven, upon hearing the performance of Haydn's Creation, declared it not only the latter's masterpiece, but one of the greatest monuments of musical genius the world has ever known. He was of course right.
You may wish to visit this excellent reference site on Haydn's Oratorio, "The Creation", Kongsberg Kantori: Dublin 2003, Joseph Haydn, The Creation, Oratio in Three Parts. At this site, the reviewer typifies Haydn's masterpiece in the following terms, "The Creation was on a completely different scale to anything he had composed earlier. It was his thanks to God for the blessings life had given him. He was therefore overjoyed with the reception his work received, which then began its triumphant journey around the world."
[9] RPO Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) Biographia Literaria. Vol. I (1817): Chapter XIII
[10] Percy Bysshe Shelley: Defence of Poetry (1821): excerpta, references & notes
The Vallance Review is frequently cited in our Canadian sonnet journal, SONNETTO POESIA ISSN 1706-4524. To read the current issue or any back issues, you may visit the sonnet journal's Home Page here:
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