A World of Songs: Selected Poems, 1894-1921 by L.M. Montgomery and edited by Benjamin Lefebvre was published by University of Toronto Press in January 2019. A part of "The L.M. Montgomery Library," this book reprints a collection 50 poems by L.M. Montgomery that were published over a period of 25 years.
Here is the description of the volume from University of Toronto Press:
Celebrated as a novelist and made famous by her novel Anne of Green Gables and its sequels, L.M. Montgomery (1874–1942) is far less known for also writing and publishing hundreds of poems over a period of half a century. Although this output included a chapbook and a full-length collection in which she presented herself primarily as a nature poet, most of her poems appeared in periodicals, including women’s magazines, farm papers, faith-based periodicals, daily and weekly newspapers, and magazines for children. As a shrewd businesswoman, she learned to find the balance between literary quality and commercial saleability and continued to publish poetry even though it paid less than short fiction.
A World of Songs: Selected Poems, 1894–1921, the second volume in The L.M. Montgomery Library, gathers a selection of fifty poems originally published across a twenty-five-year period. Benjamin Lefebvre organizes this work within the context of Montgomery’s life and career, claiming her not only as a nature poet but also as the author of a wider range of "songs": of place, of memory, of lamentation, of war, of land and sea, of death, and of love. Many of these poems echo motifs that readers of Montgomery’s novels will recognize, and many more explore surprising perspectives through the use of male speakers. These poems offer today’s readers a new facet of the career of Canada’s most enduringly popular author.
This book collects a sample of fifty poems by L.M. Montgomery originally published in periodicals across a quarter of a century. It discusses this work in the context of early Canadian poetry and North American periodical culture of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.
"The collection of fifty poems published over a twenty-five-year period, beginning in 1894 with the first, is not only the second volume in The L.M. Montgomery Library but a step in a major reconsideration of her poetry."
—Anne Burke, Prairie Journal
"L.M. Montgomery’s verse has considerably more merit than that of many popular versifiers and yet has been unduly neglected, even by Montgomery scholars. A World of Songs expands the current limited horizon of Montgomery’s verse and possesses biographical/historical interest, including insights into publishing verse in the late Romantic period."
—Kevin McCabe, co-editor of The Poetry of Lucy Maud Montgomery
The book includes the following contents:
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Author
Abbreviations
Preface
OVERTURE
The Gable Window
PRELUDE
The Poet’s Thought
SONGS OF PLACE
In Lovers’ Lane
The Fir Lane
In an Old Garden
The Old Home Calls
The Exile
The Summons
SONGS OF MEMORY
Three Days
Companioned
Do You Remember?
Memory Pictures
INTERLUDE
The Singer
SONGS OF LAMENTATION
Irrevocable
I Would Be Well
Night Watches
If I Had Known
The Book
Longing
The Mother
SONGS OF WAR
The Last Prayer
The Three Songs
We Who Wait
Our Women
INTERLUDE
One of the Shepherds
SONGS OF LAND AND SEA
When the Fishing Boats Go Out
When the Fishing Boats Come In
Rain in the Woods
My Pictures
The Wind in the Poplars
The Sea-Shell
Before Storm
A Shore Picture
The Sea to the Shore
SONGS OF DEATH
Too Late
I Have Buried My Dead
Omega
An Old Man’s Grave
The Treasures
SONGS OF LOVE
If Love Should Come
Assurance
The Gray Silk Gown
On the Bridge
Gratitude
With Tears They Buried You To-day
Forever
To One Hated
The Lover’s Catechism
POSTLUDE
The Poet
CODA
What I Would Ask of Life
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index by Title
Index by Date
Index by First Line
ISBN: 9781487505097
Image credit:
Book cover of A World of Songs: Selected Poems, 1894-1921.
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Created February 10, 2019. Last updated May 6, 2024.
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