Carol Shields - The Collected Poetry of Carol Shields

EDITED BY NORA FOSTER STOVEL MCGILL-QUEENS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Montreal & Kingston London Chicago Estate of Carol Shields 2021 Introduction and critical apparatus McGill-Queens University Press 2021 ISBN 978-0-2280-0886-6 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-2280-0887-3 (paper) ISBN 978-0-2280-1022-7 (ePDF) ISBN 978-0-2280-1023-4 (ePUB) Legal deposit fourth quarter 2021 Bibliothque nationale du Qubec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Carol Shields Literary Trust. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION Title: The collected poetry of Carol Shields / edited by Nora Foster Stovel. Other titles: Poems Names: Shields, Carol, author. | Stovel, Nora Foster, 1942 editor.

Description: Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210236817 | Canadiana (ebook) 2021023685X | ISBN 9780228008866 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780228008873 (softcover) | ISBN 9780228010227 (PDF) | ISBN 9780228010234 (ePUB) Subjects: LCSH: Shields, CarolCriticism and interpretation. | CSH: Canadian poetry (English)20th centuryHistory and criticism. | LCGFT: Poetry. Classification: LCC PS8587 .H46 2021 | DDC C811/.54dc23 FOR CAROL SHIELDS AND THE SHIELDS FAMILY

Jan Zwicky
Nora Foster StovelUntitled poems are identified by their first line. NOVELS Small CeremoniesThe Box GardenHappenstanceA Fairly Conventional WomanSwann: A MysteryA Celibate Season (with Blanche Howard) The Republic of LoveThe Stone DiariesLarrys PartyUnless SHORT STORIES Various MiraclesThe Orange FishDressing Up for the CarnivalCollected Stories POETRY OthersIntersectComing to Canada PLAYS Departures and ArrivalsThirteen HandsFashion, Power, Guilt and the Charity of Families (with Catherine Shields) Anniversary: A Comedy (with Dave Williamson) Women WaitingUnlessLarrys Party the Musical (adapted by Richard Ouzounian with music by Marek Norman) Thirteen Hands and Other Plays CRITICISM Susanna Moodie: Voice and Vision BIOGRAPHY Jane Austen: A Life ANTHOLOGIES Dropped Threads: What We Arent Told (edited with Marjorie Anderson) Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Arent Told (edited with Marjorie Anderson) ESSAYS Startle and Illuminate: Carol Shields on WritingAfter Enlightenment The Poetry of Carol Shields Jan ZwickyTHE 1950S. An extraordinary decade in white middle-class America and its Canadian satellite: the boys home from the wars, the industrial economy booming, colonial culture once again celebrating sharply defined gender roles.

Middle-class white women were terrorized by the threat of what people would think if they failed to measure up. The rapes in the backseats and married bedrooms went unmentioned, the suicides in the kitchens were erased. The other side of town appeared in peripheral vision only. This is the culture in which Carol Shields came of age. In her work, the other side of town is rarely brought into focus and the rapes remain unspoken, but there is a growing awareness of female suicidal despair, building rage at the powerlessness of women regardless of the leafiness of their suburbs. Exactly. Exactly.

It was an era that idolized the unexamined comfiness of family life. At the heart of this idyll was Betty Crocker: high-heeled, waist cinched to twenty-two inches, in the kitchen. Shieldss work does not instruct the white middle class to check its privilege; what it does instead is invite us all to check behind that privilege. The power of Shieldss work does not, however, rest exclusively in its perception of the dark underside of middle-class optimism: it resides in the tension between that dark underside and the dream of middle-class happiness: a cherishing of togetherness, of comfort, stability, laughter, and ease. And isnt belief in that dream the reason that those of us who do have privilege must check it? Arent comfort, ease, stability, and laughter what everyone wants? Respect, too, yes; but respect as the first step toward physical and mental well-being. What no one wants is the condescension that is often visited on those who actually keep the idyll ticking over who cook the meals, take care of the sick kids, and clean the toilets.

It is a condescension that extends to women who write about domestic concerns. They are described as discovering the magic of ordinary experiences, praised for the visionary quality of their rendering of the all-too-ordinary. Its that word ordinary. No one uses it to praise Catullus or Wordsworth or Billy Collins or Philip Larkin. It is a way, even while acknowledging achievement, of saying that the work is not great, that it can never be great. Greatness is for men.

Except it isnt. A Member of Parliament Here you can see politicians viewed from the top, foreshortened on green carpet, who wander about, whisper, pop up and down, shout and shuffle paper, discuss with fire or doze through afternoons of history. Imagine if you can one of those bald heads lifted out of its walnut horizons and studied in silhouette. Then it becomes a mere man, someone misspelled on a list who scarcely matters or even exists like one of us. (62) An interest in mere women and men our strivings for happiness, their systematic thwarting in the case of many women, their occasional self-sabotage in the case of some men permeates all of Shieldss work. Are these concerns manifest in her poetry in a particular way? Does the medium of poetry allow them to manifest in a particular way? Shieldss poems consist overwhelmingly of lyric character studies: dispassionate, penetrating portraits of