我的话题是:诗歌在一个社会或一种文化中能做什么,它可能会是哪一种政治发动机。当然,我的兴趣不在于使诗歌变得有用,因为诗歌的部分能量来自想象它自身是无用的,但我希望能试着描述出一些有关诗歌本质的东西。不过首先我必须介绍我来自哪里,这些思想产生自一个什么样的社会。加拿大是一个相当年轻的国家,一八六七年才脱离英国独立,但在进入二十世纪之前,它在思想和文化方面完全附属于其母亲国,前殖民地中心。直到一九六七年才出现了一种新的国家主义 My topic is: What poetry can do in a society or a culture, what kind of political engine it may be. Of course, my interest is not to make poetry useful, because part of the power of poetry comes from imagining it is useless, but I hope I can try to describe something about the nature of poetry. But first I have to tell you where I come from and what kind of community these ideas are from. Canada was a rather young nation that was not independent from Britain in 1867 but until the turn of the twentieth century it was completely ideologically and culturally attached to its motherland and its former colonial center. Only in 1967 did a new kind of nationalism emerge