Leaving the Shade of the Middle Ground: The Poetry of F.R. Scott [Paperback]

Leaving the Shade of the Middle Groundcontains thirty-five of F.R. Scotts poems from across the five decades of his career. Scotts artistic responses to a litany of social problems, as well as his emphasis on nature and landscapes, remain remarkably relevant. Scott weighed in on many issues important to Canadians today, using different terms, perhaps, but with no less urgency than we feel now: biopolitics, neoliberalism, environmental concerns, genetic modification, freedom of speech, civil rights, human rights, and immigration. Scott is best remembered for The Canadian Authors Meet, W.L.M.K, and Laurentian Shield, but his poetic oeuvre includes significant occasional poems, elegies, found poems, and pointed satires. This selection of poems showcases the politics, the humour, and the beauty of this central modernist figure.

The introduction by Laura Moss and the afterword by George Elliott Clarke provide two distinct approaches to reading Scotts work: in the contexts of Canadian modernism and of contemporary literary history, respectively.

``WithLeaving the Shade of the Middle Ground, the Laurier Poetry series certainly seems to have fulfilled its mandate. There is the hope that more readers will encounter F.R. Scott, an artist who gives a poetic voice to political concerns that are evermore relevant, and who, when he's at his best, writes the kind of poetry you'd like to memorize.''

Table of Contents for
Leaving the Shade of the Middle Ground: The Poetry of F.R. Scott, selected with an introduction by Laura Moss

Foreword | Neil Besner

Biographical Note

Introduction | Laura Moss

Overture

Laurentian Shield

Coelacanth

Orangerie

My Amoeba Is Unaware

Mural

Lakeshore

A Grain of Rice

Incident at May Pond

Miranda

Trans Canada

To Certain Friends

Social Notes I, 1932

Social Notes II, 1935

Lest We Forget

For R.A.SlCĪ