For this collection John Glassco won the Governor General’s Award in 1971. He intended it as a definitive selection of his best poetry which includes his frequently anthologized poems such as "The Death of Don Quixote", "Brummell at Calais", "Needham Cemetery" and "Quebec Farmhouse".

Glassco’s original selection is presented here in its entirety with additional material and excerpts drawn from his later published work and his translations, together with three short prose pieces dealing with the poetic process, poetry readings and the art of translation.

A craftsman of unusual care, Glassco was known for his sensitivity and wit as well as for his forthright treatment of love, the nostalgia occasioned by the passage of time and the loss of that which we cherish.

John Glassco was a Canadian writer known for his reputation as a modern-day dandy as well as for his sophisticated poetry and prose. Born in 1909 to a wealthy family in Montreal, he attended McGill University where he became part of the Montreal Group of modernist writers. He later abandoned his studies to head to Paris, where he encountered many luminaries of the 1920s expatriate community, several of whom populated his popular fictionalized memoir, Memoirs of Montparnasse. Glassco returned to Canada in the 1930s, settling in Foster in Quebec's Eastern Townships. He went on to publish a wide variety of writings, from critical essays and book reviews to short stories and pornographic novels. His Selected Poems won the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 1971. Glassco died in 1981. Author photo cropped from 'Saucer eye', Robert McAlmon, Buffy Glassco, Graeme Taylor, from Library and Archives Canada/John Glassco collection/e010767804.

John Glassco's profile page

Michael Gnarowski co-edited The Making of Modern Poetry in Canada, compiled The Concise Bibliography of E nglish Canadian Literature, and edited the Critical Views on Canadian Writers Series for McGraw-Hill Ryerson. He has written for Encyclopedia Americana, The Canadian Encyclopedia, The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography, and The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry. Gnarowski is professor emeritus at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Michael Gnarowski's profile page

"Presented in chronological order, the poems show a movement from the rough, insistent voice of a wandering youth to the more reflective discourse of an older man who describes events that happen around him with regret, concern, and delight. This is an enjoyable collection of short poems."

Canadian Book Review Annual