Criticism and Scholarship
Literature, Canadian Literature, Creative Writing and Creativity Across Disciplines
Books
1920s Canadian Poetry
Alexander Kizuk. A Reassessment of Early Twentieth Century Canadian Poetry in English. New York: Mellen, 2000. Pages: 376. Canadian Studies Vol. 24. ISBN # 0-88946-197-X
Striving to account for the pleasure that was the rival of reality in Canadian English poetry for nearly half a century, critic and poet Kizuk (English, U. of Lethbridge) treats the work of a handful of poets and the public reception of it. Though some of the poets have been deemed transitional modernists, he argues that it would be more accurate and useful to regard them as anti-modernists because the longing for a creative surrender to oceanic experience is so strong in their work. He describes a predominance of blissful excess as a literary value during the period.
Academic Book: Reassessment of Early Twentieth Century Canadian Poetry in English (mellenpress.com)
The Sunny Way
Alexander Kizuk. A Critical Anthology of English-Canadian Verse in the Times of Sir Wilfred Laurier and William Lyon Mackenzie King (1896-1911 & 1921-1947): The Sunny Way. With a Preface by Gregory Betts. New York: Mellen, 2010. Pages: 400. IBSN #978-0-7734-1415-0
Dr. Kizuk offers a view of the early 20th century that is both broader and more detailed than is generally available. He argues that much is to be gained by preserving and studying the work of pre-modernist poets writing in Canada and England, who share, in general, views held during Sir Wilfred Laurier’s term as Prime Minister of Canada when optimism, confidence and faith in the idea that some sort of divine providence guided the progress of Canada and Empire. Under William Lyon Mackenzie King, moreover, there was a return to these attitudes. The anthology includes Arthur S. Bourinot, Audrey Alexandra Brown, George Herbert Clark, Leo Cox, Raymond Knister, Florence Randal Livesay, Isabel Ecclestone Mackay, Lloyd Roberts, and Robert Service, all well-published and respected during their lifetimes.
Selected Articles
Mostly on Canadian Literary History
“Wrestling With the Angel: Political Continuities in Canadian Poetry in the Times of Carman, Smith, Layton, and Davey.” Canada: Traditions and Revolutions. Eds. Alan F. J. Artibise and Simon Langlois. Canadian Issues/Themes canadiens (Association for Canadian Studies) Vol. xii. Montreal: University of Montreal Press, 1990. 173-86.
“Privileging the Signifier: Will To Order in the Poetics of E. J. Pratt.” Queen’s Quarterly 97, 3 (Autumn 1990): 1-18.
“’The whole of the gallant rescue:’ The Letters of E. J. Pratt.” Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, and Reviews. No. 83 (Fall/Winter 2018), pp. 141-145.
“The Rhetoric of Emancipation in Canadian Public Poetry: from Tom MacInnes to Tom Wayman.” Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents and Reviews, No. 44, Spring/Summer 1999: 1-24.
“A Rhetoric of Indeterminacy: The Poetry Of Margaret Atwood and Robert Bly.” English Studies in Canada, 23, 2, June 1997: 141-159.
“The Father’s No and the Mother’s Yes: Psychological Intertexts in Robertson Davies’ What’s Bred the Bone and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” Atlantis 14, 2 (Spring 1989): 119.
“Religion, Place, and Self in Early Twentieth-Century Canada: The Poetry of Robert Norwood.” Canadian Literature 115 (Winter 1987): 66-78
“The Case Of the Forgotten Electra: Pickthall’s Apostrophes and Feminine Poetics In Early Twentieth-Century Canada.” Studies Canadian Literature 12, 1 (June 1987): 15-35.
“Canadian Poetry in the ‘Twenties: Dialectics and Prophecy in W. W. E. Ross’s Laconics and Sonnets.” Canadian Poetry 18, 4 (Winter 1986-87): 483-97.
“Mailer’s Ghost: ‘Various and Faceted as Kaleidoscopes’.” Masculinities: Studies on Gender, 3, 1 (Spring 1995): 32-46.
Selected Articles on Education
“On Dreaming into Language: Journeys, Journaling, and Scaffolding in the ‘Staging’ of Creative Writing Courses.” Proceedings of the Conference for Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs (CCWWP) Oct. 07-11, 2010 — The University of Calgary / The Banff Centre for the Literary Arts. Wascana Review. Vol. 43, No. 1 (2012). ScienceDirect
“Journaling and the Creative Writing Workshop in Counselling and Recovery of Adult Participants.” Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 30, 2011. 1788-1794. 2nd World Conference on Psychology, Counselling and Guidance (WCPCG-2011) 25-30, May 2011, Antalya, Turkey. ISSN: 1877-0428. Indexed on the ScienceDirect, Scopus and Thomson Reuters Conference Proceedings Citation Index (Web of Science). Jan. 2012.
“Using Science and Creativity in Interdisciplinary Liberal Education.” International Conference on New Perspectives in Science Education. 19-20 March, Florence, Italy. Conference Proceedings published by Filodiritto Editore, included in Academia.edu and indexed in Google Scholar.
“Teaching Continuities in Popular Culture and The Great Books: From Homeric Wisdom to Contemporary Grief and Folly.” The International Scientific Committee, ICLLL 2020 22th International Conference on Languages, Literature and Linguistics, Athens, Greece, Oct. 22-23. 2020. Published by the World Academy of Science, Engineering, and Technology. https://waset.org/publications.
“Teaching Humanities Traditions in the 21st Century: Canons in the Last Last Best West.” International European Academic Conference on Education and Humanities (WEI-EH-Rome 2018), Rome, Italy, November 13-15,2018. West East Journal of Social Sciences (WEJSS) (ISSN 2168-7315 USA). Published proceedings.
Alexander Kizuk 