Earle Birney’s poems are known for their intellectual depth, social awareness, and experimental energy, making him one of the most important figures in modern Canadian poetry. His work often blends myth, history, psychology, and politics, while remaining deeply attentive to the human condition.
Birney frequently explores themes of war, violence, power, alienation, and moral responsibility. Having lived through the upheavals of the twentieth century, he wrote poems that confront the impact of war and ideology on individual lives. At the same time, his poetry is rich with irony, wit, and dark humor, preventing it from becoming didactic.
Stylistically, Birney was an innovator. He experimented with free verse, unconventional typography, concrete poetry, and spoken rhythms, pushing Canadian poetry beyond traditional forms. His language can shift from lyrical to sharply analytical, often within the same poem.
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| Earle birney |
One of Birney’s strengths is his ability to connect personal experience with larger historical and philosophical questions. His poems challenge readers to think critically about society while remaining emotionally engaged, securing his place as a bold and influential poetic voice.
El Greco: Espolio
The carpenter is intent on the pressure of his hand
on the awl and the trick of pinpointing his strength
through the awl to the wood which is tough
He has no effort to spare for despoilings
or to worry if he'll be cut in on the dice
His skill is vital to the scene and the safety of the state
Anyone can perform the indignities It's his hard arms
and craft that hold the eyes of the convict's women
There is the problem of getting the holes exact
(in the middle of this elbowing crowd)
and deep enough to hold the spikes
after they've sunk through those bared feet
and inadequate wrists he knows are waiting behind him
He doesn't sense perhaps that one of the hands
is held in a curious gesture over him--
giving or asking forgiveness?-
but he'd scarcely take time to be puzzled by poses
Criminals come in all sorts
as anyone knows who makes crosses
are as mad or sane as those who decide on their killings
Our one at least has been quiet so far
though they say he talked himself into this trouble
a carpenter's son who got notions of preaching
Well here's a carpenter's son who'll have carpenter sons
God willing and build what's wanted
temples or tables mangers or crosses
and shape them decently
working alone in that firm and profound abstraction
which blots out the bawling of rag-snatchers
To construct with hands knee-weight braced thigh
keeps the back turned from death
But it's too late now for the other carpenter's boy
to return to this peace before the nails are hammered
Vancouver Lights
About me the night moonless wimples the mountains
wraps ocean land air and mounting
sucks at the stars The city throbbing below
webs the sable peninsula The golden
strands overleap the seajet by bridge and buoy
vault the shears of the inlet climb the woods
toward me falter and halt Across to the firefly
haze of a ship on the gulps erased horizon
roll the lambent spokes of a lighthouse
Through the feckless years we have come to the time
when to look on this quilt of lamps is a troubling delight
Welling from Europe's bog through Africa flowing
and Asia drowning the lonely lumes on the oceans
tiding up over Halifax now to this winking
outpost comes flooding the primal ink
On this mountain's brutish forehead with terror of space
I stir of the changeless night and the stark ranges
of nothing pulsing down from beyond and between
the fragile planets We are a spark beleaguered
by darkness this twinkle we make in a corner of emptiness
how shall we utter our fear that the black Experimentress
will never in the range of her microscope find it? Our Phoebus
himself is a bubble that dries on Her slide while the Nubian
wears for an evening's whim a necklace of nebulae
Yet we must speak we the unique glowworms
Out of the waters and rocks of our little world
we conjured these flames hooped these sparks
by our will From blankness and cold we fashioned stars
to our size and signalled Aldebaran
This must we say whoever may be to hear us
if murk devour and none weave again in gossamer:
These rays were ours
we made and unmade them Not the shudder of continents
doused us the moon's passion nor crash of comets
In the fathomless heat of our dwarfdom our dream's combustion
we contrived the power the blast that snuffed us
No one bound Prometheus Himself he chained
and consumed his own bright liver O stranger
Plutonian descendant or beast in the stretching night--
there was light
Poet-tree
i fear that i shall never make
a poem slippier than a snake
or oozing with as fine a juice
as runs in girls or even spruce
no i wont make not now nor later
pnomes as luverlee as pertaters
trees is made by fauns or satyrs
but only taters make pertaters
& trees is grown by sun from sod
& so are the sods who need a god
but poettrees lack any clue
they just need me & maybe you
The Bear On The Delhi Road
Unreal tall as a myth
by the road the Himalayan bear
is beating the brilliant air
with his crooked arms
About him two men bare
spindly as locusts leap
One pulls on a ring
in the great soft nose His mate
flicks flicks with a stick
up at the rolling eyes
They have not led him here
down from the fabulous hills
to this bald alien plain
and the clamorous world to kill
but simply to teach him to dance
They are peaceful both these spare
men of Kashmir and the bear
alive is their living too
If far on the Delhi way
around him galvanic they dance
it is merely to wear wear
from his shaggy body the tranced
wish forever to stay
only an ambling bear
four-footed in berries
It is no more joyous for them
in this hot dust to prance
out of reach of the praying claws
sharpened to paw for ants
in the shadows ofdeodars
It is not easy to free
myth from reality
or rear this fellow up
to lurch lurch with them
in the tranced dancing of men
From The Hazel Bough
I met a lady
on a lazy street
hazel eyes
and little plush feet
her legs swam by
like lovely trout
eyes were trees
where boys leant out
hands in the dark and
a river side
round breasts rising
with the finger's tide
she was plump as a finch
and live as a salmon
gay as silk and
proud as a Brahmin
we winked when we met
and laughed when we parted
never took time
to be brokenhearted
but no man sees
where the trout lie now
or what leans out
from the hazel bough
Sestina For The Ladies Of Tehuántepec
"Teh. has six claims to fame: its numerous hotsprings
(radioactive, therapeutic); moderate earthquakes
(none in several years) ; herbivorous iguanas
(eaten stewed); Dictator Porfirio Diaz
(d. 1911); its hundred-mile-wide isthmus;
and the commanding beauty of its Indian women."
Stately still and tall as gilliflowers the women
though they no longer glide unwary past the hotsprings
naked as sunlight to each slender softer isthmus
now that ogling busloads (Greyhound) make their earth quake
And still skirt-bright before the flaking palace of old Diaz
(hotel) they gravely offer up their cold iguanas
Their furtive men (unfamed) who snare iguanas
sliding on tree-limbs olive-smooth as are their women's
have fallen out of peonage to landlord Diaz
into an air more active than their tepid hotsprings
more prompt with tremors than the obsolete earthquakes
rumbling through their intercontinental isthmus
From the stone music of their past the only isthmus
from astronomic shrines fantastic as iguanas
to this unlikely world (3 bil.) that waits its earthquake
is their long matriarchal ritual of women
whose eyes from fires more stubborn than under hotsprings
flash out a thousand Mayan years before a Diaz
Goldnecklaced turbaned swaying in the square of Diaz
volute and secret as the orchids in their isthmus
braids black and luminous as obsidian by hotsprings
beneath their crowns of fruit and crested live iguanas
rhythmic and Zapotecan-proud the classic women
dance (v. marimbas) their ancient therapy for earthquakes
0 dance and hurl flamboya till the cobbled earth quakes
let your strong teeth shine out in the plaza lost to Diaz
toss your soaring sunflower plumes sunflowering women!
Hold for all men yet your supple blossoming isthmus
lest we be noosed consumed with all iguanas
and leave the radiant leaping of the lonely hotsprings
Beneath all hotsprings lie the triggered earthquakes
Within this gray iguana coils another Diaz
Is there a green isthmus walking yet in women?
