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Dear Mr. McArthur:
Toronto,
Aug. 20, 1919.
Mr. Peter McArthur,
Ekfrid,
Ont.
I have let myself in for the preparation of a little anthology to
be called "Fifty Best Canadian Poems," Similar anthologies of English
and American poems were issued a couple of years ago, and a Canadian
anthology is therefore in order; but to be candid, I could wish now
that somebody other than myself had taken over the job.
My plan at present is to limit the poets represented to about eight
and to give them representation according to their relative importance.
Carman and
Roberts, for instance, would have five poems each,
Campbell,
D.C. Scott and
Marjorie Pickthall four each, and so on down the list. Now
I write to ask if you would be so good as to tell me what poems you
consider inevitably belong in the proposed anthology — I do not mean the
whole fifty, but such as you regard as among the best work of our
Canadian poets.
As you will perhaps understand, I am finding my chief difficulty
over
Carman. I could pick out fifty poems of his worthy of a space, but
his best five — there's the rub. What would be your choice, may I ask?
I intend, of course, to give you a place, and have tentatively
selected "Birds of Passage." What have you to say to that?
Yours truly,
ADDRESS:258 Garden Avenue.