A passionate believer in the power of art-and especially poetry-to influence and critique contemporary culture, Louis Dudek devoted much of his life to shaping the Canadian literary scene through his meditative and experimental poems as well as his work in publishing and teaching. All These Roads: The Poetry of Louis Dudek brings together thirty-five of Dudek's poems written over the course of his sixty-year career.

Much of Dudek's poetry is about the practice of art, with comment on the way the craft of poetry is mediated by such factors as university classes, public readings, reviews, commercial presses, and academic conferences. The poems in this selection-witty satires, short lyrics, and long sequences-reflect self-consciously on the relationship between art and life and will draw readers into the dramatic mid-century literary and cultural debates in which Dudek was an important participant.

Karis Shearer's introduction provides an overview of Dudek's prolific career as poet, professor, editor, publisher, and critic, and considers the ways in which Dudek's functional poems help, both formally and thematically, to carry out the tasks associated with those roles. Comparing Dudek's reception to that of NourbeSe Philip, Marilyn Dumont, and Roy Miki, Frank Davey's afterword locates Dudek in a pre-1980s version of multiculturalism that is more complex than many critics would have it. According to Davey, Dudek broadened the limits on the possible range and type of poetry for subsequent generations of Canadian writers.

Louis Dudek was one of Canada's most important and influential cultural workers. After gaining his PhD from Columbia University, Dudek in 1951 returned from New York to Montreal, the city of his birth, to take up a position as professor of English at McGill. Dudek's return to Canada marked the beginning of his efforts to revolutionize the Montreal poetry scene through little magazines and small-press publishing, providing alternatives to commercial presses and opportunities for talented young poets. In 1956 he started The McGill Poetry Series, which gave a start to several young poets, including Leonard Cohen. The author of numerous books of poetry, Louis Dudek died in 2001.

Table of Contents for
All These Roads: The Poetry of Louis Dudek, selected with an introduction by Karis Shearer

Foreword | Neil Besner

Biographical Note

Introduction | Karis Shearer

On Poetry and Profession

Functional Poetry: A Proposal

Theory of Art

What we Profess

Lesson

It Is An Art

Hellcats in Heaven (Report on the book Cerberus)

Kingston Conference

Poetry Reading

Line and Form

"Europe" at Sea

Poetry

Advice to a Young Poet

The Retired Professor

Old Books

Dedications and Intertexts

For E.P.

Kosmos: The Greek World (For Michael Lekakis)

Emily Dickinson

James Reaney's Dream Inside a Dream, or The Freudian Wish

Irving Layton's Poem in Early Spring

Rich Man's Paradise (After F.R. Scott)

Quebec Religious Hospital by A.M. Klein

Carman's Last Home

Europe Without Baedeker But with Pound

Tar and Feathers

Reply to Envious Arthur

The Progress of Satire (For F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith)

The Demolitions (For John Glassco)

A Note for Leonard Cohen

Tao (For F.R.S)

For Ron Everson (After Ezra Pound, and Confucius)

Proust

Homosexuality

For William Carlos Williams

Long Poems

from Europe (Fragment 95)

from En México

Afterword | by Frank Davey

Acknowledgements