The Essential Douglas LePan

Poems

The Essential Douglas LePan presents a wide-ranging collection of poetry—from tense verses on the fog of war to homoerotic love poems to lyrics in praise of the natural world, all in celebration of the heart’s blood ‘that runs through and supports everything mankind has made’.

A veteran of the Second World War, Douglas LePan never forgot his experience of the horrors of battle. His bold, powerful verses often recall scenes of valour, tenacity and honour amid the ‘festivals of savagery’ that soldiers face at every turn. LePan focused memorably on combat and on courage; he focused too on luminous moments of comradeship, vulnerability and candour. Whether about love, war or nature, LePan’s work serves to ‘Plunder the mind’s aerial cages / Or the heart’s deep catacombs’, and reveals the human capacity for courage in all its forms.

The Essential Poets Series presents the works of Canada’s most celebrated poets in a package that is beautiful, accessible and affordable. The Essential Douglas LePan is the nineteenth volume in the increasingly popular series.

Contributors

Douglas LePan

Douglas LePan was a Canadian writer, diplomat and professor of literature. Born May 25, 1914, LePan served in Italy with the Canadian Army during the Second World War—an experience he never forgot, and one that informed much of his literary output over the course of his career. He spent over a decade in the Canadian foreign service before taking up an academic life, teaching at Queen’s University and at the University of Toronto. He is one of a handful of writers to have won the Governor General’s Literary Award both for Poetry (in 1953 for The Net and the Sword) and for Fiction (in 1964 for The Deserter). LePan died in Toronto in 1998.

John Barton

John Barton’s twenty-six books, chapbooks and anthologies include West of Darkness: Emily Carr, a Self-Portrait; Hypothesis; Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay-Male Poets; For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin: Selected Poems; Polari; and We Are Not Avatars: Essays, Memoirs, Manifestos. He is also the editor of The Essential Douglas LePan. During a three-decade career in literary magazine publishing, he served as co-editor of Arc Poetry Magazine and editor of The Malahat Review. Lost Family: A Memoir, his twelfth collection of poems, is forthcoming in the fall of 2020. He lives in Victoria, BC.
Chapter Title Contents Contributors Pages Year Price

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1 – Foreword ; 4 $0.40

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2 – The Wounded Prince – Coureurs de bois – A Country Without a Mythology – Canoe-Trip ; 5 $0.50

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3 – Tuscan Villa – Persimmons – Reconnaissance in Early Light – An Incident – The Net and the Sword – The New Vintage – The Nimbus – A Man of … ; 23 $2.30

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4 – The Green Man – Stragglers – Victory – A Radiance ; 7 $0.70

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5 – Arthurian Enchantments – Reading the Iliad – A Head Found at Beneventum – A Nightpiece, of London in the Blackout – Two Views of Army Headquarters – Below … ; 4 $0.40

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6 – Emblem – A Northern River, with Figures – Flames , at the Beginning – According to La Rochefoucauld – Passacaglia ; 5 $0.50

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7 – "Strip gloire and grandeur from their place in the pediment" ; 1 $0.10

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8 – On a Path Behind the Hotel – Willow Trees, by Killarney Channel ; 3 $0.30