Detailed case studies of novels by Leonard Cohen, Michael Ondaatje, George Bowering, Daphne Marlatt, and Anne Carson, as well as sections on A.M. Klein and Anne Michaels, reveal how these authors framed their early novels according to formal precedents established in their poetry. In tracking the authors’ shift from lyric to long poem to novel, Rae also investigates their experiments with non-literary art forms - photography, painting, film. The authors discussed combine disparate genres and media to alter notions of narrative coherence in the novel and engage the diverse but fragmented cultural histories of Canadian society.

IAN RAE. Associate Professor, Department of Modern Languages, King’s University College at Western University. Expertise in Canadian literature, recipient of an Insight Development Grant entitled “Mapping Stratford Culture.”

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"Working to define and defend this countertradition, Rae's study is an engaging, intelligent, and important step toward reconfiguring the place of the poet's novel in Canadian literature." Andy Weaver, York University

"Any serious student or critic of modern and contemporary Canadian fiction or poetry will want to read this book. It is a major contribution, admirably thorough, and will certainly affect the ways we read these writers' fictions and their poetry." Neil Besner is Associate Vice-President, International, University of Winnipeg
"Working to define and defend this countertradition, Rae's study is an engaging, intelligent, and important step toward reconfiguring the place of the poet's novel in Canadian literature." Andy Weaver, York University

"Any serious student or critic of modern and contemporary Canadian fiction or poetry will want to read this book. It is a major contribution, admirably thorough, and will certainly affect the ways we read these writers' fictions and their poetry." Neil Besner is Associate Vice-President, International, University of Winnipeg