Visions Fugitive
Author: Ralph Gustafson | ISBN: 1550650815 : 9781550650815 | Format: Paperback | Size: 155x230mm | Pages: 87 | Weight: .143 Kg. | Published: IPG (Véhicule Press) – January 1996 | Availability: In Print | Subjects: Poetry texts & anthologies
Visions Fugitive is Ralph Gustafson’s last book of poetry
completed not long before his death in North Hatley, Quebec, in May 1995. In a writing career that spanned sixty years he published many volumes of poetry and edited the influential Penguin Book of Canadian Verse. Fire on Stone, published in 1974, won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry and Configurations at Midnight received the 1993 QSPELL A.M. Klein Poetry Prize.
“There is wisdom in this last book, as always, for Ralph was an infinitely wise poet. Yet finally it is the lonely heart which predominates, by itself as the heart always must be, contemplating life and death and solitude, in love but ultimately unrequited, and beautifully articulate.” — Bruce Whiteman
Ralph Barker Gustafson
(16 August 1909 – 29 May 1995) was a Canadian poet and professor at Bishop’s University. He was born at Lime Ridge, Quebec on August 16, 1909. He was educated at Bishop’s University, earning a B.A. (1st class honours and winner of the Governor General’s medal along with many other awards) in 1929 and an M.A. in 1930. He also completed a B.A. at Oxford in 1933, an M.A. in 1963, and has been awarded a D. Litt. from Mount Allison in 1973, a D.C.L. from Bishop’s University in 1977, and a D. Litt from York University in 1991. Over the years Dr. Gustafson has held a number of posts. He was music master, Bishop’s College School, 1920-30; teacher of English St. Alban’s School for Boys, Brockville, Ontario, 1933-34; tutor and journalist, London, England, 1935-38; British Information Services, New York, N.Y., 1942-46; Professor and Poet-In-Residence, Bishop’s University, 1963-79 and music critic, C.B.C., since 1960. Winner of a number of awards, including the Order of Canada in 1992 and the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, Dr. Gustafson has written over twenty volumes of poetry and prose as well as editing several anthologies of verse. He died in 1995. Winter Prophecies is a film about Gustafson’s life and art.
Works
- * The Golden Chalice (London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1935)
- * Alfred the Great (London: Michael Joseph, 1937)
- * Epithalamium in Time of War (New York: L. F. White, 1941)
- * Lyrics Unromantic (New York: Privately printed, 1942)
- * Flight into Darkness: Poems (New York: Pantheon, 1944)
- * Quebec, Late Autumn (Offprint from Queen’s Quarterly, 1950)
- * Quebec Winter Scene (Offprint from Dalhousie Review, 1952)
- * Hard Litany (Offprint from the Dalhousie Review, 1953)
- * Rivers Among Rocks (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1960)
- * Rocky Mountain Poems (Vancouver: Klanak, 1960)
- * Sift in an Hourglass (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966)
- * Ixion’s Wheel: Poems (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969)
- * Selected Poems (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972)
- * Theme and Variations for Sounding Brass (Sherbrooke, P.Q.: Progressive Publications, 1972)
- * Fire on Stone (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974)
- * Corners in the Glass (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977)
- * Soviet Poems: Sept. 13 to Oct. 5, 1976 (Winnipeg: Turnstone, 1978)
- * Gradations of Grandeur: a Poem (Victoria: Sono Nis, 1979)
- * Sequences: Poems (Windsor, Ont.: Black Moss, 1979)
- * Landscape with Rain (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980)
- * Nine Poems (Toronto: League of Canadian Poets, 1980)
- * The Remarkable Heavens (Lantzville, B.C.: Oolichan Books, 1980)
- * Conflicts of Spring (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1981)
- * Dentelle / Indented: Poems (Trans. Roland Sutherland, et al. Colorado Springs, Colorado: Colorado College Press, 1982)
- * The Moment is All: Selected Poems, 1944-83 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1983)
- * Solidarnosc: Prelude (Sherbrooke, Que.: Progressive Publications, 1983)
- * At the Ocean’s Verge: Selected Poems (Ed. John Walsh. Literary Series. Redding Ridge, Conn.: Black Swan, 1984)
- * Directives of Autumn (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984)
- * Impromptus (Lantzville, B.C.: Oolichan Books, 1984)
- * Twelve Landscapes (Toronto: Shaw Street, 1985)
- * Manipulations on Greek Themes: Poems (Toronto: Ascham, 1986)
- * Collected Poems (Victoria, B.C.: Sono Nis, 1987)
- * Winter Prophecies (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987)
- * The Celestial Corkscrew and Other Strategies (Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic, 1989)
- * Shadows in the Grass: Poems (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1991)
- * Configurations at Midnight (Toronto: ECW, 1992)
- * Collected Poems Vol. 3 (Victoria, B.C.: Sono Nis, 1994)
- * Tracks in the Snow (Lantzville, B.C.: Oolichan, 1994)
- * Visions Fugitive (Montreal: Vehicule, 1996)
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