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Literary Criticism Canadian

Eternal Conversations:

Remembering Louis Dudek

edited by Sonja Skarstedt

Publisher
DC Books
Initial publish date
Nov 2003
Category
Canadian, NON-CLASSIFIABLE, NON-CLASSIFIABLE
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780919688759
    Publish Date
    Nov 2003
    List Price
    $23.95

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About the author

Louis Dudek, born in Montreal, was educated both at McGill and Columbia University. In New York, as a young poet, he corresponded extensively with Ezra Pound. Back in Montreal, he joined the McGill faculty, where his lectures on literature became legendary. In combination with other key figures in the first and second waves of Canadian poetic modernism, he commenced many of the most important small magazines and literary presses of the mid-century. As a writer, critic, and cultural observer, his career has been dedicated to ongoing intellectual and artistic discussion. Justly identified as Canada's premier man of letters, Dudek died in 2001.

Sonja Skarstedt's profile page

Editorial Reviews

"Eternal Conversations is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the life and talents of Louis Dudek and in the second wave of Canadian modernism and Montreal's place in it. It also presents a fine study in mentorship in the arts. Plato believed that fair forms beget fair practices Dudek's appreciation of beauty overflowed into many beautiful friendships." -- Charlotte Hussey, Montreal Review of Books, 2003 "Many of the contributors state that you could never walk away from a conversation with Dudek without feeling both satisfied and frustrated, satisfied that in this mundane world of mind-numbing pursuits, you had just spent some worthwhile time with a person who valued art and ideas, and frustrated because he made you aware that there was still so much more to know and to do." The Gazette, 2004 "For decades after beginning to teach at McGill University in 1951, Dudek was The Great Encourager, publishing the first books of numerous poets such as Leonard Cohen. Dudek came to Vancouver in the summer of 1962 to teach a summer course at UBC attended by several of the young writers who were producing the Tish poetry newsletter, among them Lionel Kearns. Louis wanted to open us up, to make us look beyond our immediate restricted area of focus, to put our writing into the wider arena of history and learning. It was a good tonic forus at that point of our development, Kearns recalled in Eternal Conversations: Remembering Louis Dudek.... " -- BC BookWorld, 2004 "Eternal Conversations paints a loving and multifaceted portrait of Dudek the man and treats a literary icon with appropriate reverence, humour, and intelligence." -- McGill News, 2004