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"Dickinson's understanding of the work of these poets is exemplary, and he has written Canadian Primal in a way that's both engrossing and critically astute. This could become the sort of book that changes the lives of young poets and philosophers." Laurie D. Graham, publisher of Brick: A Literary Journal

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"Mark Dickinson's Canadian Primal is a decisive event in Canadian literary criticism, comparable to Margaret Atwood's Survival and Northrop Frye's The Bush Garden. Dickinson brings us the lives and achievements of five great poets who sing powerfully of what philosophy has forgotten, which is how to live intensely when the life around us, even as it suffocates, is nearer to our spirit than it has been for millennia." Gordon Teskey, Harvard University

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"Telling their stories of fruitful settling, as well as his own, Dickinson gracefully intertwines biography, literary explication, and contemplations of emplaced cultural awakenings and shiftings." Canadian Literature

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"Canadian Primal provides fascinating human portraits of each of these five poets, including their family backgrounds and upbringings, their diverse jobs and educations, their early forays into literature, and the writers and thinkers who inspire them." The Trumpeter

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