"When considering the straight male poets who have held sway in Canada for the last sixty years and while acknowledging the growing diversity of their aesthetics, it is striking how much of a boy's club Canadian poetry has remained (just ask the girls.) Their articulations of self recall the goings-on of a club or a locker room, a locker room from which, ironically if typically, many straight male poets have also felt excluded. Even in today's climate, which is nuanced by multiple perspectives and subject positions, it feels inevitable that a Gen-X frat pack will assert itself, assume the mantle of their elders, and attempt to hold sway." (Seminal, 17)

Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets boldly articulates a proudly queer corner of that testosterone-riddled locker room, or perhaps a new and improved locker room altogether.

As John Barton notes in his introduction, he and co-editor Billeh Nickerson have compiled this collection out of necessity: it's the first gay male Canadian poetry anthology edited by gay male Canadian poets. The poets in Seminal are a vital part of Canadian culture and ought to be celebrated as such. In this the editors are proudly partisan, while acknowledging that their work may invite dissension (most anthologies do; whoever is not included is by definition excluded). One suspects Barton and Nickerson would welcome any disagreements towards their editorial choices as a necessary contribution towards the discourse on gay male Canadian poetry.

The anthology includes poets born from 1878 to 1981 and is arranged in this order; each poem's publication date is also listed. This chronological arrangement forms a necessary part of the argument Seminal puts forth: reading the selections from beginning to end, one starts with opacity and ellipsis. For example, a blazon is written on marble rather than human flesh in Frank Oliver Call's "To a Greek Statue." (Blazon is a literary term used for a poetic catalogue of a woman's, or in this case, man's admirable physical features.) Many of these early poems are vague and airy, as if any attempts at concrete language are too great a risk to take. As the years and pages progress, the poems give forth a more open eroticism, but also a more open grief, as in Robin Blaser's "In Remembrance of Matthew Shepard," or in direct references to the 80s horrors of AIDS and death. The poems also start to diversify; form and subject are varied just as any other poetry written from the 1950s forward.

There are many bodies here: "gym sculpted bodies," "long dicks" and anonymous, "beautiful sex" to be had. There are lengthy lyrical tributes to devoted boyfriends. There are odes to Hockey Night in Canada and erotic fantasies featuring Wayne Gretzky, there are (no) farts in Winnipeg and "14 Reasons Not to Eat Potato Chips on Church Street" (a fast track to hepatitis–who knew). By ordering the poems chronologically, one can literally track the process and progress of the gay male poet in Canada. All these voices in concert begin to approach a state of grace, as in (gay, male, American) poet Frank O'Hara's poem: "Grace to be born and live as variously as possible."

Postscript: I wrote this review in Spring 2008, well in advance of Robin Blaser's recent passing, on May 7, 2009 in Vancouver. I'd like to dedicate the last lines by O'Hara to Blaser, a fitting tribute to his life and work, and suggest readers also check out poet rob maclennan's elegy/tribute The incomparable Robin Blaser in Xtra West.

Please also see Blaser's Lunch Poems reading at University of California at Berkeley, from November 2008.