Ralph Gustafson


Ralph Barker Gustafson, CM was a Canadian poet and professor at Bishop's University.

Biography

He was born in Lime Ridge, near Dudswell, Quebec on August 16, 1909. His mother was British, his father, Carl Otto Gustafson, was a Swedish photographer. He was educated at Bishop's University, earning a B.A. in 1929 and an M.A. in 1930, with a thesis on John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. He also completed a B.A. at Keble College, Oxford in 1933, an M.A. in 1963.
Over the years, Dr. Gustafson held a number of posts. He was music master, Bishop's College School, 1920–30; teacher of English St. Alban's School for Boys, Brockville, Ontario, 1933–34; tutor and journalist, London, England, 1935–38; British Information Services, New York, N.Y., 1942–46; Professor and Poet-In-Residence, Bishop's University, 1963–79 and music critic, C.B.C., since 1960. Dr. Gustafson wrote over twenty volumes of poetry and prose and edited several anthologies of verse. He died in 1995.
His views on poetry are documented in essays collected in Plummets and Other Partialities, and in letters to W.W.E. Ross published as A Literary Friendship in 1984. He also was in contact with John Sutherland.
Gustafson's early poetry owes a significant debt to Gerard Manley Hopkins and Alfred the Great ), while Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and W. B. Yeats were important influences on his later work.
In 1942, Gustafson edited the Anthology of Canadian Poetry which developed into the Penguin Book of Canadian Verse in 1958, both volumes a reflection of his extensive studies on the history of Canadian poetry.

Recognition

Gustafson won the Governor General's Award 1974 for Fire on Stone.
He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1992.
He was awarded a D. Litt. from Mount Allison University in 1973, a D.C.L. from Bishop's University in 1977, and a D. Litt from York University in 1991.
Winter Prophecies is a documentary profile on Gustafson's life and art directed by Donald Winkler and produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

Works

  • The Golden Chalice
  • Alfred the Great
  • Epithalamium in Time of War
  • Lyrics Unromantic
  • Flight into Darkness: Poems
  • Quebec, Late Autumn
  • Quebec Winter Scene
  • Hard Litany
  • Rivers Among Rocks
  • Rocky Mountain Poems
  • Sift in an Hourglass
  • Ixion's Wheel: Poems
  • Selected Poems
  • Theme and Variations for Sounding Brass
  • Fire on Stone
  • Corners in the Glass
  • Soviet Poems: Sept. 13 to Oct. 5, 1976
  • Gradations of Grandeur: a Poem
  • Sequences: Poems
  • Landscape with Rain
  • Nine Poems
  • The Remarkable Heavens
  • Conflicts of Spring
  • Dentelle / Indented: Poems
  • The Moment is All: Selected Poems, 1944-83
  • Solidarnosc: Prelude
  • At the Ocean's Verge: Selected Poems
  • Directives of Autumn
  • Impromptus
  • Twelve Landscapes
  • Manipulations on Greek Themes: Poems
  • Collected Poems
  • Winter Prophecies
  • The Celestial Corkscrew and Other Strategies
  • Shadows in the Grass: Poems
  • Configurations at Midnight
  • Collected Poems Vol. 3
  • Tracks in the Snow
  • ''Visions Fugitive''