The other harmony: the collected poetry of Eli Mandel. 2 vols

• Published in: Border crossings 2001, Vol.20 (3), p.71
• Main Authors: Mandel, Eli, Diehl-Jones, Charlene, Stubbs, Andrew, Chapman, Judy
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Poetry
• ISSN: 0831-2559

[Eli Mandel]--poet, critic, anthologist, academic, teacher--was born in Estevan, Saskatchewan, in 1922; his death in 1992 left a dramatic gap in the literary landscape of this country. The extent and range, to say nothing of the sophistication, of the poetry in The Other Harmony underscore the legitimacy of that felt loss. In this two-volume set, Andrew Stubbs and Judy Chapman have gathered all Mandel's published poetry--Trio, 1954, Fuseli Poems, 1960, Black and Secret Man, 1964, An Idiot Joy, 1967, Stony Plain, 1973, Crusoe, 1973, Out of Place, 1977, Life Sentence, 1981, Dreaming Backwards, 1981, as well as the revised version of Mary Midnight, 1979, an "Oratory" based on a character invented by Christopher Smart, the brilliant and possibly insane 18th-century visionary poet. They've also reprinted poems from Third Person Singular, an undated publication that was likely issued in the late 1940s when Mandel was a student at the University of Saskatchewan, and have assembled nearly a hundred poems from the Eli Mandel Archives at the University of Manitoba. The effect is quite striking: as a reader, suddenly you have access to the particular moments of tough beauty so characteristic of Mandel's writing, but you also are afforded a glimpse of the repeating patterns that thread through the whole opus. The young E.W. Mandel is certainly different from the later Eli Mandel, but the latter comes from the former, has learned to live through and beyond the reach of those younger eyes. It's a fascinating prospect to read a life's work: the gifts are plentiful and often quite unexpected.