Light and shadows clash in The Essential Kay Smith, a collection that demonstrates an early modernist poet’s attempts to reconcile faith, imagination, reality and being.
Over the course of her lengthy career, New Brunswick poet Kay Smith published in some of Canada’s finest literary journals. Her work displays a sophisticated fusion of images, metaphors and symbols, forgoing clear connections in favour of fractured grammar, surprising diction and her own unique poetic mythology. In Smith’s poetry, images are not signs of meaning or emotion, but rather forms of being—underpinned by her religious faith, her aptitude for metaphysical inquiry and her belief in the purity and wonder of the imagined world.
The Essential Poets Series presents the works of Canada’s most celebrated poets in a package that is beautiful, accessible and affordable. The Essential Kay Smith is the twentieth volume in the increasingly popular series.