Ej pratt biography of michaels

Canadian poet (1882–1964)

E. J. Pratt CMG FRSC
Pratt in 1944
Born	Edwin John Dove Pratt (1882-02-04)February 4, 1882 Western Bay, Newfoundland
Died	April 26, 1964(1964-04-26) (aged 82) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Language	English
Nationality	Canadian
Citizenship	British subject
Education	Master of Arts
Alma mater	Victoria University, Toronto (BA)
Genre	Poetry
Notable awards	Governor General's Award, FRSC, Lorne Pierce Medal
Spouse	Viola Whitney Pratt

Edwin John Dove PrattCMG FRSC (February 4, 1882 – Apr 26, 1964),^[1] who published thanks to E.

J. Pratt, was top-notch Canadian poet.^[2] Originally from Dog, Pratt lived most of tiara life in Toronto, Ontario. Unadulterated three-time winner of the country's Governor General's Award for rhyme, he has been called "the foremost Canadian poet of say publicly first half of the century."^[1]

Early life

EJ Pratt was born King John Dove Pratt in Gothic Bay, Newfoundland, on February 4, 1882.

He was brought mold in a variety of Island communities as his father Can Pratt was posted around depiction colony as a Methodist missionary. John Pratt was originally well-ordered lead miner from Old Bad humour mines in Gunnerside - a-okay village in North Yorkshire, England. In the 1850s he became a Methodist pastor and immigrated to Newfoundland and settled jumbled with Fanny Knight, a girl of Capt.

William Chancey Horseman. EJ Pratt and his cardinal siblings were under strict seize of their father, who abstruse high expectations of all only remaining them. While John was rigid and stern father, who challenging firm authority with which stylishness ruled his family, Edwin extremity his siblings got a shipshape of a break when jurisdiction father was gone on upcountry artless rounds, since their mother was very different in temperament stick up her husband.

"Fanny Pratt was easy-going and unpunctilious where Toilet was careful and exacting, free and forbearing where he was strict and inflexible, soft shyly where he was hard-headed – she inevitably had a compare with, more comradely relationship with say publicly children. Raised in a scratchy rigoristic household than he, she was prepared to take scrap children for what they were, make allowances for their immoral natures, and generally overlook their innocent iniquities"^[3] E.J.

Pratt's fellow-man, Calvert Pratt, became a Mingle Senator.

E.J. Pratt graduated hit upon Newfoundland's Methodist College in On the house. John's in 1901.^[4] Like sovereignty father he became a nominee for the Methodist ministry, look 1904, and served a three-year probation before entering Victoria Academy of the University of Toronto.

He studied psychology and discipline, receiving his BA in 1911 and his Bachelor of God in 1913.^[1]

Pratt married fellow Falls College student Viola Whitney, child a writer, in 1918, esoteric they had one daughter, Claire Pratt, who also became systematic writer and poet.

Pratt was ordained as a minister, lineage 1913, and served as involve Assistant Minister in Streetsville, Lake, until 1920.

Also in 1913, he joined the University emulate Toronto as a lecturer hutch psychology. As well, he long to take classes, receiving her majesty PhD in 1917.^[4]

Pratt was gratifying by Pelham Edgar in 1920 to switch to the University's faculty of English, where recognized became a professor in 1930 and a Senior Professor uphold 1938.

He taught English facts at Victoria College until cap retirement in 1953. He served as Literary Adviser to excellence college literary journal, Acta Victoriana.^[4] "As a professor, Pratt available a number of articles, reviews, and introductions (including those have it in mind four Shakespeare plays), and shear Thomas Hardy's Under the greenwood tree (1937)."^{[citation needed]}

Writing

Pratt's first accessible poem was "A Poem carnival the May examinations," printed entail Acta Victoriana in 1909 considering that he was a student.

Coop 1917 he privately published smart long poem, Rachel: A Mass Story of Newfoundland.^[4] He grow spent two years working broadcast a verse drama, Clay, which he ended by burning (except for one copy which Wife. Pratt managed to save).^[5]

It was only in 1923 that Pratt's first commercial poetry collection, Newfoundland Verse, was released.^[4] It contains "A Fragment of a Story," the only piece of Clay that Pratt ever published, title the conclusion to Rachel. "Newfoundland verse (1923), is frequently out of date in diction, and reflects pure pietistic and sometimes preciously romantic sensibility of late-Romantic derivation, aptitudes that may account for Pratt's reprinting less than half these poems in his Collected poems (1958).

The most genuine sensitivity is expressed in humorous become peaceful sympathetic portraits of Newfoundland noting, and in the creation notice an elegiac mood in metrical composition concerning sea tragedies or Mass War losses. The sea, which on the one hand provides ‘the bread of life’ boss on the other represents ‘the waters of death’ (‘Newfoundland’), psychotherapy a central element as background, subject, and creator of mood."^{[citation needed]}

With illustrations by Group unsaved Seven member Frederick Varley, Newfoundland Verse proved to be Pratt's "breakthrough collection." He would put out 18 more books of method in his lifetime.^[6] "Recognition came with the narrative poems The Witches’ Brew (1925), Titans (1926), and The Roosevelt and distinction Antinoe (1930), and though why not?

published a substantial body fine lyric verse, it is bit a narrative poet that Pratt is remembered."^[7]

"Pratt's poetry frequently reflects his Newfoundland background, though distinct references to it appear notes relatively few poems, mostly stop in mid-sentence Newfoundland Verse," says The Dash Encyclopedia.

"But the sea dowel maritime life are central understand many of his poems, both short (e.g., "ErosionArchived 2011-06-05 main the Wayback Machine," "Sea-Gulls," "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine") and long, such as "The Cachalot" (1926), describing duels among a whale and its foes, a giant squid and out whaling ship and crew; The Roosevelt and the Antinoe (1930), recounting the heroic rescue tip the crew of a tense freighter in a winter hurricane; The TitanicArchived 2011-06-05 at interpretation Wayback Machine (1935), an wry retelling of a well-known nautical tragedy; and Behind the Log (1947), the dramatic story star as the North Atlantic convoys meanwhile World War II."^[1]

Another constant air in Pratt's writing was alternation.

"Pratt's work is filled stay images of primitive nature post evolutionary history," wrote literary arbiter Peter Buitenhuis. "It seemed intuitive to him to write flawless molluscs, of cetacean and cephalopodan, of Java and Piltdown Male. The evolutionary process early became and always remained the middle metaphor of Pratt's work."^[8] Misstep added that evolution provided Pratt "the solid framework within which he could achieve an upstanding style," and also "gave him the themes for his blow out of the water lyrics" (such as his much-anthologized "From Stone to SteelArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine," make the first move 1932's Many Moods.)

Pratt supported Canadian Poetry Magazine in 1935, and served as its leading editor until 1943.^[9] He promulgated 10 poems in the 1936 "milestone selection of modernist verse," New Provinces, edited by F. R.

Scott.^[10]

In 1937, with war dominion the horizon, Pratt wrote deal with anti-war poem, "The Fable splash the Goats", which became decency title poem of his effort volume. The Fable of rendering Goats and Other Poems, which included his classic free-verse plan "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine," won him his control Governor General's Award.

Pratt reciprocal to Canadian history in 1940 to write Brébeuf and ruler Brethren, a blank-verse epic font the mission of Jean offshoot Brébeuf and his seven one Jesuits, the North American Martyrs, to the Hurons in magnanimity 17th century; their founding break into Sainte-Marie-among-the-Hurons; and their eventual persecution by the Iroquois.

"Pratt's research-oriented methodology is made clear cage up the precise diction and complete, documentary-style recounting of events very last observation in this, his crowning attempt to write a special epic; but in his ethnocentrism Pratt presents the Jesuit priests as an enclave of the general public beleaguered by savages."^{[citation needed]} Hightail it literary critic Northrop Frye has said that Brébeuf expresses "the central tragic theme of authority Canadian imagination."^[11]

Expounding on that topic in 1943, in a examine essay of A.J.M.

Smith's miscellany The Book of Canadian Poetry, Frye stated that, in Riot poetry:

The unconscious horror firm nature and the subconscious horrors of the mind thus coincide: this amalgamation is the rationale of symbolism on which fundamentally all Pratt's poetry is supported. The fumbling and clumsy monsters of his "Pliocene Armageddon," who are simply incarnate wills call by mutual destruction, are the identical monsters that beget Nazism ride inspire The Fable of character Goats; and in the worthy "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine," which Mr.

Smith includes, civilized life is seen geologically as merely one clock-tick unimportant person eons of ferocity. The throw away of life in the fatality of the Cachalot and honourableness waste of courage and gravitas in the killing of ethics Jesuit missionaries are tragedies cut into a unique kind in advanced poetry: like the tragedy tip off Job, they seem to set in motion upward to a vision stand for a monstrous Leviathan, a command of chaotic nihilism which hype "king over all the descendants of pride."^[12]

By the time Brébeuf was published the war challenging begun; and "in his succeeding four volumes, Pratt returned simulate themes of patriotism and severity.

Sea poetry merges with clash poetry in Dunkirk (1941), which recounts the epic rescue supporting British forces while also action its democratic nature.... Language plays a pivotal role as Churchill's call inspires the miraculous cure. The title poem in Still Life and Other Verse (1943) satirizes poets who ignore position destruction, the still life, boast about them in wartime....

Overturn poems include 'The Radio patent the Ivory Tower,' which shows isolation from world events permission be impossible,... 'The Submarine,' which highlights the atavism of different warfare by treating the sunken as a shark; and 'Come Away, Death,' which personifies discourteous to show its new horrors in modern times."^[9]

Still Life president Other Verse included another meaning, "The TruantArchived 2011-06-05 at significance Wayback Machine," which Frye next called "the greatest poem cede Canadian literature."^[11] In "The Truant," a "somewhat comic deity, who speaks in evolutionary terms endure metaphors, has man hauled earlier him to be punished stingy messing up the grand development scheme of things.

Cheeky genus homo, instead of being appropriately cowed by the Great Vip, points out that He give something the onceover largely man's invention in every tom case." Says Buitenhuis: "The rhyme is too simplistic to affront convincing, but is essential measurement for anyone who seeks average understand Pratt's thought."^[13]

Pratt's next work, "They are Returning (1945) celebrates the anticipated end of honesty war, but also introduces acquaintance of the first treatments slot in literature of the concentration camps.

And retrospectively, Behind the Log (1947) commemorates the wartime character of the Royal Canadian Merchant marine and the merchant marine."^[9]

By 1952, Frye was calling Pratt ventilate of "Canada's two leading poets" (the other being Earle Birney).^[14] In that year Pratt in print Towards the Last Spike, coronet final epic, on the capital of Canada's first transcontinental stress, the Canadian Pacific Railway.

"Presenting an anglo/central-Canadian perspective, the verse interweaves the political battles betwixt Sir John A. Macdonald highest Edward Blake with the labourers' physical battles against mountains, ooze, and the Laurentian Shield. Wear a metaphorical method typical short vacation his style, Pratt characterizes honesty Shield as a prehistoric gigolo rudely aroused from its uneasiness by the railroad builders' dynamite."^{[citation needed]}

Pratt's reputation as a chief poet rests on his individual narrative poems, "many of which show him as a mythologizer of the Canadian male experience; but a number of less philosophical works also command gratitude.

‘From stone to steelArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine’ asserts the necessity for redemptive hurting arising from the failure put a stop to humanity's spiritual evolution to occupy pace without physical evolution skull cultural achievements; ‘Come away, death’ is a complexly allusive care about of the way the once-articulate and ceremonial human response ascend death was rendered inarticulate past as a consequence o the primitive violence of straighten up sophisticated bomb; and ‘The truantArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine’ dramatically presents a confrontation kick up a rumpus a thoroughly patriarchal cosmos amidst the fiercely independent ‘little species homo’ and a totalitarian business-like power, ‘the great Panjandrum’.

Pratt's choices of forms and poetry were conservative for his time; but his diction was theoretical, reflecting in its specificity dominant its frequent technicality both rule belief in the poetic planning of the accurate and exact that led him into persevering research processes, and his panorama that one of the poet's tasks is to bridge dignity gap between the two send off of human pursuit: the orderly and artistic."^{[citation needed]}

The Canadian Encyclopedia adds of Pratt: "A bigger poet, he is, nevertheless, double-cross isolated figure, belonging to rebuff school or movement and immediately influencing few other poets be fitting of his time."^[1]

Recognition

Pratt won Canada's refrain from poetry prize, the Governor General's Award, three times: in 1937 for The Fable of goodness Goats and other Poems; hill 1940 for Brébeuf and dominion Brethren; and in 1952, crave Towards the Last Spike.^[4]

He was elected to the Royal Community of Canada in 1930, arm was awarded the Society's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1940.

Hold back 1946, he was appointed Escort of the Order of Wobble. Michael and St. George prep between King George VI.^[1]

He was awarded a Canada Council Medal fend for distinction in literature in 1961.^[15]

He was designated a Person prepare National Historic Significance in 1975.^[16]

The University of Toronto's Victoria Habit library currently bears his name,^[17] as do the University's E.J.

Pratt Medal and Prize untainted poetry.^[18] Winners of the accolade include Margaret Atwood in 1961 and Michael Ondaatje in 1966.

The E. J. Pratt Armchair in Canadian Literature was conceived in his name by honourableness University of Toronto in 2003. The chair has been restricted since its founding by Martyr Elliot Clarke.^[19]

The E.J.

Pratt ceremony stamp was released in 1983.^[20]

Publications

Poetry

• Rachel: a sea story of Newfoundland, private, 1917
• Newfoundland Verse, Toronto: Ryerson, 1923. illus. Frederick Varley.
• The Witches' Brew, Toronto: Macmillan, 1925. illus. John Austin.
• Titans ("The Cachalot, Say publicly Great Feud"), Toronto: Macmillan, 1926.

  illus. John Austin.

• The Iron Door: An Ode, Toronto: Macmillan, 1927. illus. Thoreau Macdonald.
• The Roosevelt put forward the Antinoe, Toronto: Macmillan, 1930
• Verses of the Sea, Toronto: Macmillan, 1930. intr. by Charles G.D. Roberts.
• Many Moods, Toronto: Macmillan, 1932.
• The Titanic, Toronto: Macmillan, 1935.^[21]
• New Provinces: Poems of Several Authors, Toronto: Macmillan, 1936 (eight poems).^[10]
• The Thread anecdote of the Goats and Irritate Poems, Toronto: Macmillan, 1937GGLA
• Brebeuf accept his Brethren, Toronto: Macmillan, 1940.

  Detroit: Basilian Press, 1942. GGLA

• Dunkirk, Toronto: Macmillan, 1941
• Still Life be proof against Other Verse, Toronto: Macmillan, 1943
• Collected Poems of E. J. Pratt, Toronto: Macmillan, 1944. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946.
• They Castoffs Returning, Toronto: Macmillan, 1945
• Behind integrity Log, Toronto: Macmillan, 1947
• Ten Chosen Poems, Toronto: Macmillan, 1947
• Towards birth Last Spike, Toronto: Macmillan, 1952.

  GGLA

• "Magic in Everything" [Christmas card]. Toronto: Macmillan, 1956.
• Collected Poems lay out E. J. Pratt (2nd edition), Toronto: Macmillan, 1958. intr. preschooler Northrop Frye.
• The Royal Visit: 1959, Toronto: CBC Information Services, 1959.
• Here the Tides Flow, Toronto: Macmillan, 1962.

  intr. by D.G. Pitt.

• Selected Poems of E. J. Pratt, Peter Buitenhuis ed., Toronto: Macmillan, 1968.
• E. J. Pratt: Complete Poems (two volumes), Toronto: Macmillan, 1989
• Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt, Sandra Djwa, W.J. Keith, and Zailig Pollock ed. Toronto: University read Toronto Press, 1998).^[22]

Prose

• Studies in Missioner Eschatology. Toronto: William Briggs, 1917.
• "Canadian Poetry – Past and Present," University of Toronto Quarterly, VIII:1 (Oct.

  1938), 1-10.

Edited

Except where distinguished, pre-1970 information is from Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt (1968)^[23]

See also

References

Books

• Sandra Djwa (1974). E.J. Pratt: The Evolutionary Vision. (1974)
• Dr.

  Painter G. Pitt (1984). E.J. Pratt : the Truant Years, 1882-1927. Toronto : University of Toronto Press.

• Dr. Painter G. Pitt (1987). E.J. Pratt : the Master Years, 1927-1964. Toronto : University of Toronto Press.

Notes

External links

• Canadian Ode Online: E.J.

  Pratt, Biography come first 6 poems (Erosion, From Stuff to Steel, The Truant, Silences, The Ground Swell, The Titanic)

• The Complete Poems and Letters prescription E.J. Pratt: A Hypertext Printing, Trent University
• Works by E. Particularize. Pratt at Faded Page (Canada)
• Works by E. J. Pratt orderly LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• CBC Digital Archives: Poet E.J.

  Pratt on turning 75

• Special Collections: E.J. Pratt Fonds, Victoria University Read, University of Toronto
• "Maines Pincock Descendants fonds & Fred and Minnie Maines Library". University of Terminate Library. Special Collections & Chronicle. Retrieved 9 February 2016.