A World of Songs: Selected Poems, 1894-1921

by L. M. Montgomery, Benjamin Lefebvre (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487531539
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	02/07/2019
Series:	The L.M. Montgomery Library
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	941 KB

About the Author

Benjamin Lefebvre, editor of The L.M. Montgomery Library, is director of L.M. Montgomery Online. His publications include an edition of Montgomery’s rediscovered final book, The Blythes Are Quoted, and the three-volume critical anthology The L.M. Montgomery Reader, which won the 2016 PROSE Award for Literature from the Association of American Publishers. He lives in Kitchener, Ontario.

Table of 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

What People are Saying About This

Jane Ledwell

"L.M. Montgomery is a major writer of personal and general significance to many readers, and her work is of wide interest. The poems selected for this volume complement her better-known novels and short stories. Reading them will reward readers with insights and unanticipated pleasures."

Andre Narbonne

"The two greatest strengths of A World of Songs are its author and its editor, the first a major Canadian writer whose books have sold millions of copies — a fact that has not disqualified her from being the subject of serious academic scholarship — the other a world-renowned Montgomery scholar with, to judge by his publications, an encyclopedic knowledge of her work."

Kevin McCabe

"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."

Editorial Reviews

"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
"The two greatest strengths of A World of Songs are its author and its editor, the first a major Canadian writer whose books have sold millions of copies – a fact that has not disqualified her from being the subject of serious academic scholarship – the other a world-renowned Montgomery scholar with, to judge by his publications, an encyclopedic knowledge of her work."—Andre Narbonne, Department of English, University of Windsor
"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
"L.M. Montgomery is a major writer of personal and general significance to many readers, and her work is of wide interest. The poems selected for this volume complement her better-known novels and short stories. Reading them will reward readers with insights and unanticipated pleasures."—Jane Ledwell, PEI poet, co-editor of L.M. Montgomery and War

From the Publisher

"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."

Prairie Journal - Anne Burke