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Ralph Gustafson (1909-1995)
Ralph Gustafson was born in Lime Ridge, Quebec, of Anglo-Scandanavian
ancestry. His local education culminated at Bishops University and continued
abroad at Oxford, where he received his B.A. in 1933. After a brief return
to Canada he resided in England until 1938 where he developed a rather
traditional romantic poetic, including publications such as The golden
chalice (1935) and the verse play King Alfred (1937). He next
settled in New York, where his work shifted to the new realities of American
modernism and the horrors of war. During WWII he worked for the British
Information Service in Manhattan. Three collections appeared reflecting
this change: Epithalamium in time of war (1941), Lyrics unromantic
(1942), and Flight into darkness. Ultimately Gustafson's legacy
will be seen in his work as an anthologist. Having come under the influence
of that other great Canadian expatriate anthologist, A.J.M. Smith, Gustafson
edited three anthologies for Penguin: Anthology of Canadian Poetry/English
(1942), Canadian accent (1944) and The Penguin book of Canadian
verse (1958; revised 1967).
Gustafson returned to Canada in 1960 to
become writer-in-residence at Bishop's, where he also taught English.
His repatriation was preceded by extensive travel, which was reflected
in his next two books, Rocky mountain poems (1960) and Rivers
among rocks (1960). Finally having settled in his mother country,
Gustafson settled into a prolific groove, with publications such as Sift
in an hourglass (1966), Ixion's wheel (1969), Fire on stone
(1974), for which he won the Governor General's award, Corners in glass
(1977), Soviet poems (1978), Sequences (1979), Landscape
without rain (1980), Conflicts of spring (1981) and Gradations
of grandeur (1982).
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