A Poet on Poets

Don Gutteridge

I always find it illuminating to hear what poets think of other poets. With more than 40 poetry collections to his credit, Don Gutteridge has gone a step further with what he calls his “personal and idiosyncratic” slim volume Masters of the Craft (Hidden Brook Press, 2021). It presents 19 tributes to classic writers, 14 of whom are poets, both British and Canadian, acknowledged as influences for the good on his own work.

What makes the tributes unique is that each is composed, appropriately, as a poem. Not only does Gutteridge explain his admiration, but often skillfully interweaves one or more of a poet’s hallmark images within his own lines.

For example, from “Dylan” [Thomas]:

         ...we loved
         your raunchy rhymes, your muscular
         rhythms and the Celtic tang
         that sang in your chains like the sea

And from [Al] “Purdy”:

         who churned out muscular verse
         by the baker’s dozen, leavened,
         with a lyric lilt, wherein
         home-made beer
         and Caribou horses and all
         the Annettes coexisted
         in friendly felicity

As John B. Lee affirms in his Foreword “The Anxiety of Influence”, “Who else to learn from but the great artists on whose shoulders we stand?”