Record: 1Richard Outram and Barbara Howard's Gauntlet Press: Expanding into the World. By: Warner, Patrick. Canadian Literature. Summer2013, Issue 217, p88-101. 14p. Abstract: The article focuses on the poetry written by Richard Outram. Outram wrote more than twenty books of poems between the years 1959 and 2005. Most of Outram's works were published by Gauntlet Press, which was established by Outram and his wife Barbara Howard, or by small Canadian presses. During most of his career, Outram's poetry was ignored by critics and readers. (AN: 93363293)Persistent link to this record (Permalink): http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url,uid&db=aph&AN=93363293&site=ehost-live&scope=siteCutl and Paste: Richardo Outram and Barbara Howard's Gauntlet Press: Expanding into the World.Database: Academic Search Premier Richard Outram and Barbara Howard's Gauntlet Press Expanding into the World Richard Outram was born in Oshawa, Ontario in 1930. A prolific poet, between 1959 and his death in 2005 he published over twenty books of poetry. His output also included pamphlets, broadsides, and occasional pieces. Two of his early books were published by large mainstream publishers: Exsultate, Jubilate came out with Macmillan in 1966 and Turns and Other Poems was published by Chatto&Windus with the Hogarth Press/ Anson-Cartwright Editions in 1976. At a glance, Outram appears to have had an auspicious start to his career as a poet; neither book, however, attracted much attention. The majority of Outram's books and pamphlets were published either by the Gauntlet Press -- the private imprint established by Outram and his wife Barbara Howard -- or in trade editions by a variety of small Canadian presses, including Tortoise Press, Aliquando Press, Anson-Cartwright Editions, Exile Editions, The Porcupines Quill, Food for Thought Books, and The St. Thomas Poetry Series.[ 1] Poor reception was to dog Outram's poetry for most of his career. It was not until the final years of his life that his work began to draw substantive critical attention. I argue that it was the recipients of the Gauntlet Press publications -- the informal network of friends and acquaintances with whom Outram and Howard shared this work -- who ultimately proved the most influential in setting the stage for Outram's late-flowering reputation as one of Canada's finest poets.[ 2] Richard Outram and Barbara Howard established the Gauntlet Press in Toronto in 1960 when they acquired a small Adana HQ flatbed handpress from England (Sanger 55). There are two phases in the history of the press. The first lasted from 1960 to 1988 and produced fifty-four letterpress items under the Gauntlet Press imprint (Sanger 251). Notable among these were the book-length collections Creatures (1972), Thresholds (1973), Locus (1974), and Arbor (1976), all printed in limited editions of sixty to eighty copies. The second phase in the history of the press began in 1993, after a hiatus of four years, and is generally referred to as the electronic phase. Peter Sanger counts one hundred broadsheets and eight books or pamphlets inkjet-printed between 1993 and 2001, some of which were published under the Gauntlet Press imprint and some not (253).[ 3] Also produced during the electronic phase was Ms Cassie, a work consisting of seventy-seven broadsides that were produced piecemeal, and later assembled into "perhaps eight copies of the entire sequence," all of which were unbound (Howley n. pag.). Subsequent to Outram's death, ninety-two Gauntlet Press works were reproduced in digital form by Memorial University Libraries' Digital Archive Initiative (DAI). The primary impetus behind the Gauntlet Press was artistic. It allowed Outram and Howard to produce printed works that may not have been economically viable as trade publications. Works produced by the press were, for the most part, designed by Howard and contain the poetry or prose of Outram. Many of the books and broadsides also contain wood engravings by Howard. Outram occasionally turned his hand towards design: Howard notes his contribution to several publications, particularly the "Japanese-style bindings of Syzygy, Tradecraft, Peripatetics and Eros Descending" (17). The Press gave both the poet and the artist free rein to pursue what Outram described to Peter Sanger as "the exploration of some of the potencies of the conjunction, the marriage, of word and image" (Sanger 71). It was a philosophy that guided the press during both its letterpress and electronic phases. Letterpress Gauntlet Press publications were influenced stylistically by the works of other small/fine presses, including the UK's Golden Cockerel Press and the Hogarth Press (Sanger 10). Sanger reports that the Nonesuch edition of John Glanvill's translation of Bernard de Fontenelle's A Plurality of Worlds, designed by Francis Meynell in 1929, was "key to the direction they were seeking in terms of design" (71). Gauntlet Press works produced during the press' electronic phase used typographic ornaments from a variety of fonts, with all design works completed in WriteNow, a basic word processing application (Howley). Howley notes that Outram and Howard "did briefly flirt with sophisticated page layout programs but found them far too complicated. Instead he and Barbara treated the computer like their old Adana letterpress, the final results only being achieved by multiple passes through the printer!" (n.pag.) For most of his career, Richard Outram's poetry received little attention from critics and readers: one only needs to consult Amanda Jernigan's bibliography on Memorial's University's Gauntlet Press website to see how little. Between 1960 and 1970, Outram's work was the subject of a single review: Samuel Moon's 1968 review of Exsultate, Jubilate in the American magazine Poetry. In the next decade, 1970 to 1980, a period which saw major works from the Gauntlet Press as well as several trade editions of Outram's work, the situation improved only marginally with two published reviews. Outram's work is notably absent from the major anthologies of the time; it is neither in 15 Canadian Poets edited by Gary Geddes nor in Ralph Gustafson's The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse. Nor is it included in subsequent editions of these or other anthologies. Reception improved somewhat in the 1980s and 1990s (two more decades of sustained artistic output for Outram) with thirteen and twelve articles, interviews, or reviews published respectively in each decade. It was not until 1999, however, and the publication of a special issue of DA: A Journal of the Printing Arts (44), edited by Alan Horne, that Outram's work and particularly Outram and Howard's work with the Gauntlet Press began to receive substantive critical attention. Further interest in Outram's work increased significantly in the first decade of the new millennium, beginning with the publication of Peter Sanger's "Her Kindled Shadow…" in 2001, the first book-length scholarly investigation of Outram's oeuvre. In 2003, poet and critic Carmine Starnino argued that "Outram is not unknown. He's ignored" (25). If this is a correct summation of the lack of critical response to Outram's work -- and the literary record supports it -- the question becomes why was his work ignored? Starnino, Michael Darling, David Solway, Sanger, and others (all strong readers of Outram's work) point to the difficulties Outram's poems can present to any but the most erudite reader. As Darling puts it, "For those of us lacking the literary omniscience of, shall we say, Northrop Frye, Outram's wide-ranging allusiveness presents serious obstacles to the understanding of his poetry" (14). In the same article, Darling quotes Sanger who, speaking of the semantic complexities in Outram's work, says: "the best companion a reader can have when trying to understand an Outram poem is an etymological dictionary" (14). Sanger also argues that Outram's poetry was "underappreciated because the shapers of public opinion had lost touch with poetry's theatrical origins" (69). Zachariah Wells comments that Outram's poems "are often philosophical and densely allusive to the point of near opacity" (67). Solway finds that Outram's poetry sometimes "grows just a little too florid and rhetorically intemperate for comfort" (10). Clearly, there are challenges in reading Outram, but as Starnino, Darling, and others point out, opacity is only half the story; Outram also produced formal and linguistically exuberant work that was easily accessible to readers. Starnino offers the Outram poems "Yackety Sax" and "Barbed Wire" as examples (28). Similarly, in his essay, "A Chance Encounter with Richard Outram," Darling offers a close reading of the poem "Chance Encounter," finding it "not particularly difficult or allusive" and demonstrating "the poet's technical virtuosity" (14). If the difficulties -- both real and perceived -- in Outram's poetry proved daunting to potential readers, then a second level of obstruction was furnished by Canadian literary tastes of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Outram engaged with the whole tradition of English Language poetry His poems were formal and sometimes linguistically baroque. These elements set him in conflict with Canadian literary nationalism of the day which tended to look at formal elements in poetry -- metre and rhyme, for example -- as a foreign infestation; the literary scene at the time favoured the home-grown and plainly colloquial in packages of loosely-packed free verse. As Roy MacSkimming points out in The Perilous Trade, his history of Canadian publishing from 1946 to 2006, "Men of letters … were out of style in the cultural politics of 1970. The Zeitgeist celebrated the new and the radical" (168). "Printed in Canada by mindless acid freaks" was the motto of Toronto's Coach House Press (MacSkimming 168). It was an unwelcoming time for Outram to begin publishing his work. His 1976 collection, Turns and Other Poems, could not find a publisher in Canada until it first found one in England. Sanger tells the story of the collection's manuscript: "it was rejected by MacMillan and by various other Canadian commercial publishing houses. Louise Dennys … was outraged at the rejection.' She sent the manuscript to Chatto and Windus in England….It was eventually issued in the United Kingdom in 1976 under Chatto & Windus/Hogarth Press imprint, and in Canada in conjunction with Anson Cartwright editions" (68). And the literary environment continued to be unwelcoming: two decades later -- decades in which Outram had written most of his major works -- Sanger was unable to find a publisher for "Her Kindled Shadow…" his foundational study of Outram's work. Sanger self-published both the first edition (2001) and the revised and expanded second edition of the work (2002) under the imprint of the Antigonish Review Press, where he was Poetry Editor (Sanger 21). Given the poor critical and public reception that greeted trade editions of Outram's work, the poet was faced with finding other ways to reach an audience. Personal correspondence became his main means of establishing that readership. By all accounts he was both a voluble communicator and frequent letter writer, with a significant part of his correspondence taking the form of Gauntlet Press books, broadsides, printed holiday greetings, and occasional pieces that he sent to many people over a period of almost thirty years. In a phone interview with Amanda Jernigan, the Outram scholar characterizes Outram and Howard's practice of sending Gauntlet Press works to friends and acquaintances as "another way of keeping the conversation going." Asked to expand on this point, Jernigan stated her belief that Outram and Howard's artistic life was their real life, that their artistic work was more intense and personal than any letter could be, and that sharing it allowed friends into the most intimate sphere of their lives. In preparing this paper I was able to acquire from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto scanned copies of Gauntlet Press "recipient lists," the lists of people to whom Outram and Howard sent Gauntlet Press titles and keepsakes. The lists came to me as five separate .pdf files. These unpaginated and handwritten lists add up to approximately five hundred pages. Lists 1 and 2 give the names of the recipients under each poem or book title, while List 3 gives poem or book titles under the name of the recipient. Lists 1 and 2 record approximately twenty-five hundred copies of one hundred and seventy-four separate titles sent to one hundred and eighty different people. Most of these were mailed in the 1990s, though a small number were sent as early as 1984 and as late as 2001. List 3 records approximately twenty-six hundred copies of various titles sent to eighty-four people. Again, these were sent mostly during the 1990s, with a small number of titles mailed in the late 1970s/early 1980s and a few mailed as late as 2001. It should be clear from the above description that List 1 and List 2 taken together do not make a comprehensive title index, nor does List 3 make a comprehensive recipient index. Lists 1 and 2 contain recipient names that are not recorded on List 3; List 3 records poems that do not have a corresponding entry in either List 1 or List 2. The same can be said of Lists 4 and 5. The first part of List 4 records approximately three hundred and fifty-four copies of Ms Cassie poems sent to a total of twenty different people, a small number of whom are also entered in List 3. List 4 also contains recipient lists for Gauntlet Press books Creatures, Thresholds, Arbor, and Locus, as well as recipient lists for many of Outram's trade publications. Finally, List 5 consists of recipient lists for a number of the Gauntlet Press Christmas and Valentine's Day keepsakes produced by Outram and Howard. Considerable cross-checking of these lists would have to be done to establish a comprehensive index of recipients and a listing of which publication each received and when. Suffice to say that Outram mailed thousands of copies of more than a hundred and seventy titles to at least one hundred and eighty people over a period of thirty years. This is clearly a significant and sustained effort, and one that serious scholarly investigations of Outram's correspondence should profitably take into account. Some recipients were on the Gauntlet Press mailing list for decades while others make a single appearance. Some recipients received almost all the Gauntlet Press titles, some only one or two. In a few cases -- notably that of Peter Sanger, a relatively late addition to the recipient lists -- Outram made a concentrated effort to provide him with as many of the Gauntlet Press titles as were still available. Most of the entries on the recipient lists are dated, so one can see how recipients for a particular title were added over time. The question of who got which titles is a fascinating one. It may be that some insight into Outram's selectivity -- in the sense of whom he selected to receive Gauntlet Press titles and which titles he sent them -- may be found in that correspondence. Of the almost two hundred names contained on the recipient lists, a number stand out by virtue of their literary reputations: Northrop Frye, John Metcalf, George Johnston, Robert Denham, and Guy Davenport.[ 4] Of this group, some were the recipients of many mailings over many years (Manguel and Anson-Cartwright, for instance) and others received mailings only occasionally (such as Metcalf and Ormsby). It should be noted, however, that the majority of those on the recipient lists were not writers, poets, critics, scholars or book sellers, but fall into the category of friends and acquaintances. Some of this latter group were among the most frequent recipients of Gauntlet Press works throughout the lifetime of the Press: the Chapmans and Jay Jelinek to name a few. Whether all of those on the recipient lists were acquainted with each other is doubtful; probably the only thing that united them was that they were part of a small group who, from time to time, over a period of years, received an envelope containing a beautifully designed Gauntlet Press book, chapbook, broadside, Christmas or Valentine's Day keepsake. As Jernigan notes, "Outram's publishing life is difficult to separate from his private correspondence" ("Wholes and Parts" 16). The recipient lists allow us to glimpse a private world, one that constituted an ideal readership for Outram. As mentioned, Outram did engage in correspondence with recipients. The correspondence coupled with gifts of Gauntlet Press publications may be seen as an intimate and controlled approach to developing a readership, at least when compared with the scattershot approach of trade publication where the majority of responses will come from reviewers who may be reading the poet's work for the first time. The former approach gives the poet ample opportunity to slowly educate his audience, a state of affairs devoutly to be wished in a poet of Outram's complexity. As a strategy -- if it can be called that -- it was in Outram's hands more passive than active. There is little evidence to suggest that Outram attempted to coach his readers in any way; nor is there substantive evidence that he tried to impose on his readers a particular reading of any one poem. A look at some of the correspondence between Richard Outram and two of his most avid readers, Peter Sanger and Amanda Jernigan, is instructive in this regard. In the first chapter of Through Darkling Air, Sanger comments on the relationship between writer and critic: "There are obvious dangers and temptations involved in privileged access of critic to writer. I do not wish to be considered Outram's voice or final authority on his work. Therefore, in only two or three cases, where absolutely at a loss and suspecting there was something I must know, I asked him that direct, deadening question: 'What does this mean?'" (27). A review of over five hundred pages of correspondence between Sanger and Outram demonstrates that this caution was as well developed in the poet as it was in the critic. In a letter to Sanger dated 29 March 1999 Outram begins, "A few afterthoughts to my last letter. I am concerned not to seem to be in any way attempting to shape what you write; but of course, want to help in any way that I can." Overall, the correspondence corroborates the position taken by both Sanger and Outram. In a letter dated 8 March 1999 regarding Northrop Frye, Sanger asks, "Could you tell me anything about his effect, as a teacher, upon you? (the other stuff, your later readings of him, is something that's really my job to work out and probably make a fool of myself doing…)." Later, in the same letter, Sanger poses eight questions related to particular allusions in Outram's work, most of them in regard to the identity of speakers in "Benedict." Sanger makes clear that his asking is a last resort: "here is the residue of questions I don't think I'm ever going to be able to answer myself, can you please help me …" (emphasis original). In only one instance did Outram offer Sanger detailed comments on one of his (Outram's) poems. In a letter to Sanger from 4 November 1999, Outram expiates one passage of his poem "Tradecraft." On November 18 of the same year, Sanger responded with the following, "Thank you for the 'Tradecraft' notes. They persuade me that the poem needs the equivalent of an annotated separate edition. It is your Finnegan's" (sic). Elsewhere in the correspondence it becomes clear that Outram agreed to read various drafts of Her Kindled Shadow. On 18 October 1999 Sanger wrote, "Richard, thank you for going through the typescript. What you said was what I needed to try to make it better. I'll make the changes you suggested. Tomorrow, Tuesday, I'll start work again with the intention of having a full version ready for you to look at by the middle of November." It is also clear from a later exchange that Outram agreed to disseminate a more finished version of the manuscript. A letter from Sanger dated 24 July 2000 has the following information "The promised copy of "Her Kindled Shadow…" I'm putting in another package. In the one-side of the page version, it is so bulky. When I get a chance, I'll also send you a copy of the master disk. Yes, please do circulate copies: the book was written for your work, and if it can help secure more readers for your work by private circulation then that is part of its proper job" (emphasis his). In a letter to Sanger dated 30 December 2001, Outram says, "I hope in the next couple of days to get down to a proofing of the photocopy of 'Her Kindled Shadow…'" Such exchanges form only a fraction of Sanger and Outram's correspondence written between the early 1990s and 2001. The letters cover many subjects: poetry, book collecting, music, travel, nature, and sometimes personal matters. An undated letter from Sanger to Outram (possibly written the mid-nineties) indicates when Sanger began to read Outram, "I've read your work for many years. When I first found it, during the 1970s, it became part of my magnetic north." In a personal e-mail to me from Peter Sanger, dated 13 December 2012, he writes, "Her Kindled was about half finished before I ever met Richard personally" (emphasis Sanger). Sanger's letters reveal him to be a scholar who was deeply committed to the task of appreciating the work of Richard Outram. Outram, in turn, both encouraged and appreciated Sanger's efforts. A letter from Outram to Sanger from 10 September 1996 details the poet's efforts to get Gauntlet Press works and other related works into Sanger's hands. In a letter sent three years later on 9 August 1999, Outram writes of his pleasure in reading a draft of "Her Kindled Shadow …", noting that Sanger "understood and attempted to articulate the complementary relationship, not just of the two of us as persons, but the two of us as artists," and also tackled the "spiritual dimension" of the work. The "us" in the quotation refers to Outram and Barbara Howard, and yet it is clear that by the late 1990s the relationship between Sanger and Outram had also become complementary, blending both the personal and the artistic. If Peter Sanger developed a critical interest in the work of Richard Outram long before meeting the poet, Amanda Jernigan was first a friend to Outram and later a critic of his work. In her article "Graceful Errors and Happy Intellections: Encounters with Richard Outram," which appears in issue 89 of the New Quarterly, Jernigan says, "At some point over the course of our first meeting at the fundraiser, we exchanged addresses. Richard mentioned that he might put something in the mail. I didn't really expect anything to come … but a package did arrive by mail, from Richard and Barbara, about a week later" (31-32). Jernigan and Outram's relationship, as revealed in their correspondence, demonstrates the same underpinnings and development over time as Outram and Sanger's relationship. It was complementary and blended both the personal and the artistic. Jernigan shied away from asking Outram direct questions about his work or about specific poems. In a 12 December 2012 e-mail to me, Jernigan states, "I don't recall corresponding with Outram about specific poems of his, in a critical-minded way. But certainly our correspondence was everywhere about poetry, and had a huge influence on me, not only as a critic (of his work and of the work of others) but as a poet" (Jernigan). Elsewhere, Jernigan has the following to say about Outram's answers to questions she raised when they discussed poetry, "these answers, though patient, thoughtful, and well-wrought, did not constitute the meat of Richard's correspondence with me. The meat was in the poems, the quotations, the groups of linked references that he sent along with the letters, many in broadsheet form" (emphasis hers, "Graceful Errors" 33). She records feeling deeply honoured to be a recipient, and asking herself, on receiving one such mailing, "Am I worthy?" (telephone interview). Many other recipients of Outram's mailings were similarly charmed. Sanger puts it this way: "Few people who received a copy of one of Outram's broadsheet poems in the morning mail could have read it without feeling the day alter into a wider and brighter range of possibilities" (255). Louise Dennys, in a letter dated "Wednesday, 18th February" (no year) and written on Hugh Anson-Cartwright stationery, wrote: "Thank you too -- more than I can say in this short note -- for 'Covenant.' It arrived this morning when I was at a dismally low ebb (trying to be a punch advertiser and with the ad copy escaping me) and brought a light into my day and my being." Aesthetically beautiful objects, prized by collectors, and often containing brilliant poetry, Gauntlet Press publications bring the reader closest to the literary and artistic endeavours of Outram and Howard. They offer the reader an intimate lens not available to those familiar only with Outram's trade publications. The effect of being included in this bright circle was a powerful one for many people. Jeffery Donaldson describes it as follows: Over the span of four decades, the artist and poet have published and mailed out to fortunate recipients their fine hand-sewn books, prints and broadsheets, original poems, telling arrangements of prose and lyric, all joined with accompanying woodcut, drawings, blazons, pictorial devices and icons, in a kind of chiaroscuro of image and word. No one who was ever treated to Howard's [sic] and Outram's company together could have failed to notice that their marriage was an expression of mutual encounter and recollection. He continues, By recollection, I mean a constant remembering or assembling of their endeavours into the life they shared with friends and artists, a life they inhabited, or gathered together, quite literally, by sending it out regularly into our midst in book-filled care packages and envelopes. Such recollections expand into the world as they are shared by us, brought out to see, moved about from home to home, saved up and dreamed over. (18) While the paths to literary recognition are often subterranean, not to mention tangential and convoluted, it should perhaps come as no surprise that a number of people included in the charmed circle of recipients would prove to be highly influential in bringing Outram's work to attention, both in the years immediately prior to his death and in the years since. In 1999, Donald McLeod provided a checklist of Gauntlet Press publications in number 44 of DA: A Journal of the Printing Arts, a special issue on the Gauntlet Press. In 2001, Sanger finally published the first major work of scholarship about Outram in "Her Kindled Shadow…", followed by a revised and expanded edition in 2002. In 2010, Sanger published another revised and expanded edition under the title Through Darkling Air. In 2003, John Metcalf and Michael Carbert put out an issue of the periodical Canadian Notes & Queries entirely devoted to the work of Richard Outram, and containing essays by William Blissett, Terry Griggs, Amanda Jernigan, Guy Davenport, W. J. Keith, Eric Ormsby and Jeffery Donaldson, all of whom appear on Gauntlet Press recipient lists. In 2007, Jernigan completed a thesis for her Master's degree at Memorial University of Newfoundland on Outram's poetry entitled "Wholes and Parts (All Puns Intended): The Mereological Vision of Richard Outram's Poetic Sequences." Jernigan has also contributed articles about Outram and his work to several periodicals and was instrumental in arranging with the trustees of Outram and Howard's estate, Peter Newman and Susan Warner-Keene, for a collection of Gauntlet Press publications to be housed at Memorial University's Queen Elizabeth II Library. Critical interest in Outram's work has also increased in recent years with a new generation of poets/critics taking up his cause, including Carmine Starnino, Zachariah Wells, Evan Jones, George Murray, Brian Bartlett and Steven Heighton. A collection of essays on Outram's poetry from Toronto's Guernica Editions, edited by Ingrid Ruthig, was published in fall 2011, and contains essays by Robert Denham and Eric Ormsby, to name a few. Also in 2011, Porcupine's Quill issued The Essential Richard Outram, edited by Jernigan who is currently at work on a PhD thesis at McMaster University that will see her produce Outram's collected poems. In 2012, England's Carcanet Press included a selection of Outram's poems in Modern Canadian Poets: An Anthology of Poems in English, edited by Canadian poets Evan Jones and Todd Swift. Finally, the project spearheaded by Memorial University Humanities librarian Martin Howley to digitize Gauntlet Press works has brought Outram and Howard's work to a worldwide audience. In the year 2010, Gauntlet Press pages on the DAI received 44,977 page views from 5000 visitors. Approximately 80% of these originated from computers within Canada, about 10% from the US and a further 10% from the UK, France, the Republic of Korea, and other countries. Richard Outram's reputation as a poet is rising, a state of affairs that is directly attributable to the circle of friends and acquaintances who were recipients of Gauntlet Press publications. Whether the level of critical attention his work currently enjoys will be sustained and where exactly Outram's reputation will come to rest is difficult to predict. There is not as yet a consensus around Alberto Manguel's opinion -- published in 1988 -- that Outram was "one of the finest poets writing in English" (58). What can be said at this time is that the poetry of Richard Outram is being ignored by fewer and fewer people, both in Canada and around the world. NOTES 1 Works authored by Outram and published in trade editions include, in addition to those mentioned above, Seer (1973); The Promise of Light (1979); Selected Poems, 1960-1980 (1984); Man in Love (1985); Hiram and fenny (1988); Mogul Recollected (1993); Benedict Abroad (1998); and Dove Legend (2001). 2 In "The Other Outram," Carmine Starnino refers to Richard Outram as "Canadian poetry's cleverest artificer" (23). In "A Freak of Senius," Hubert de Santana calls Outram a "major poet" (19). Alberto Manguel refers to him as "one of the finest poets writing in English" (58). In "Her Kindled Shadow…" and Through Darkling Air, Richard Sanger repeatedly makes the case that Outram's poetry is of the highest quality. 3 Notable works from this period include Around & About the Toronto Islands (1993), Peripatetics (1994), And Growes to Something of Great Constancie (1994), Tradecraft and Other Uncollected Poems (1994), Eros Descending (1995), Notes on William Blake's The Tyger (1997) and Lightfall (2001), all printed in editions of forty to forty-five copies. 4 Other recipients include Caroline Adderson, Jeffery Donaldson, Tim and Elke Inkster, Hugh Anson-Cartwright, Anne Corkett, Alice Munro, Alberto Manguel, Michael Carbert, Peter Sanger, W. J. Keith, Steven Heighton, Ross Leckie, Don McLeod, Amanda Jernigan, Susan Warner-Keene, Eric Ormsby, William Blissett, George Murray, and Terry Griggs. WORKS CITED Canadian Notes & Queries: 63 (2003). A special issue on the work of Richard Outram. Guest ed. Michael Carbert. Darling, Michael. "A Chance Encounter with Richard Outram." Canadian Notes and Queries 63 (2003): 14-16. Print. [Dennys], Louise. Letter to Richard Outram. Wednesday 18 Feb. [no yr.]. MS. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. Outram (Richard Daley) Papers Finding Aid. MS Coll. 00457: Box 25 (fol. 1). Donaldson, Jeffery. "Encounters and Recollections in the Art of Barbara Howard and Richard Outram." Canadian Notes and Queries 63 (2003): 18-23. Print. Geddes, Gary, ed. 15 Canadian Poets. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1970. Print. Gustafson, Ralph, ed. The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse. 2nd rev. ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975. Print Home, Alan, ed. DA: A Journal of the Printing Arts 44 (1999). Print. Howard, Barbara. "A Painter Pressed into the Service of Poetry." DA: A Journal of the Printing Arts 44 (1999): 15-23. Print. Howley, Martin. "MS CASSIE: A Note on the Printing and Typography." The Gauntlet Press of Richard Outram and Barbara Howard. Memorial U of Newfoundland, 2008. Web. 17 Aug. 2011. Jernigan, Amanda. "Barbara Howard, Richard Outram, and the Gauntlet Press: A Bibliography." The Gauntlet Press of Richard Outram and Barbara Howard. Memorial U of Newfoundland, 2008. Web. 17 Aug. 2011. --. "Graceful Errors and Happy Intellections: Encounters with Richard Outram." New Quarterly: New Directions in Canadian Writing 89 (2004): 29-41. Print. --. "Re: Outram Paper." E-Mail to Patrick Warner. 10 Dec. 2012. --. "Re: Outram Paper." E-Mail to Patrick Warner. 12 Dec. 2012. --. Telephone interview. 24 June 2011. --. "Wholes and Parts (All Puns Intended): The Mereological Vision of Richard Outram's Poetic Sequences." Diss. Memorial U of Newfoundland, 2007. Print. Jones, Evan, and Todd Swift, eds. Modern Canadian Poets: An Anthology of Poems in English. Manchester: Carcanet, 2010. Print. MacSkimming, Roy. The Perilous Trade: Book Publishing in Canada, 1946-2006. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2007. Print. Manguel, Alberto. "Hard Truths." Saturday Night 103.4 (1988): 57-59. Print. McLeod, Donald W. "A Checklist of the Gauntlet Press, 1960-1995." DA: A Journal of the Printing Arts 44 (1999): 26-38. Print Outram, Richard. Letter to Peter Sanger. 10 Sept. 1996. TS. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, U of Toronto. Outram (Richard Daley) Papers Finding Aid. MS Coll. 00457: Box 37. --. Letter to Peter Sanger. 29 Mar. 1999. MS. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, U of Toronto. Outram (Richard Daley) Papers Finding Aid. MS Coll. 00457: Box 30 (fol. 1). --. Letter to Peter Sanger. 9 Aug. 1999. TS. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, U of Toronto. Outram (Richard Daley) Papers Finding Aid. MS Coll. 00457: Box 37. --. Letter to Peter Sanger. 4 Nov. 1999. TS. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, U of Toronto. Outram (Richard Daley) Papers Finding Aid. MS Coll. 00457: Box 37. --. Letter to Peter Sanger. 30 Dec. 2001. TS. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, U of Toronto. Outram (Richard Daley) Papers Finding Aid. MS Coll. 00457: Box 37. Sanger, Peter. "Her Kindled Shadow…": An Introduction to the Work of Richard Outram. Antigonish: Antigonish Review, 2001; rev. ed., 2002. Print. --. Through Darkling Air: The Poetry of Richard Outram. Kentville: Gaspereau, 2010. Print. --. Letter to Richard Outram. 8 Mar. 1999. MS. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, U of Toronto. Outram (Richard Daley) Papers Finding Aid. MS Coll. 00457: Box 30 (fol. 1). --. Letter to Richard Outram. 18 Oct. 1999. MS. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, U of Toronto. Outram (Richard Daley) Papers Finding Aid. MS Coll. 00457: Box 30 (fol. 1). --. Letter to Richard Outram. 18 Nov. 1999. MS. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, U of Toronto. Outram (Richard Daley) Papers Finding Aid. MS Coll. 00457: Box 30 (fol. 1). --. Letter to Richard Outram. 24 July 2000. MS. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. Outram (Richard Daley) Papers Finding Aid. MS Coll. 00457: Box 30 (fol. 1). --. Letter to Richard Outram. n.d. MS. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, U of Toronto. Outram (Richard Daley) Papers Finding Aid. MS Coll. 00457: Box 30 (fol. 1). --. "Gauntlet Press." E-Mail to Patrick Warner. 13 Dec. 2012. de Santana, Hubert. "A Freak of Senius. A Review of Turns and Other Poems by Richard Outram." Books in Canada: March, 1978. 19-20. Print. Solway, David. "Reading Richard Outram." Canadian Notes and Queries 63 (2003): 10-12. Print. Starnino, Carmine. "The Other Outram." Canadian Notes and Queries 63 (2003): 23-29. Print. Wells, Zachariah. "The Other Outram." Arc Magazine 67 (2010): 67-68. Print. GAUNTLET PRESS WORKS REFERRED TO IN THIS PAPER Outram, Richard. Creatures. Toronto: Gauntlet, 1972. Print. --. Thresholds. Toronto: Gauntlet, 1973. Print. --. Locus. Toronto: Gauntlet, 1974. Print. --. Arbor. Toronto: Gauntlet, 1976. Print. --. Around & About the Toronto Islands. Toronto: Gauntlet, 1993. Print. --. And Growes to Something of Great Constancie. Toronto: Gauntlet, 1994. Print. --. Peripatetics. Toronto: Gauntlet, 1994. Print. --. Tradecraft, and Other Uncollected Poems. Toronto: Gauntlet, 1994. Print. --. Eros Descending. Toronto: Gauntlet, 1995. Print. --. Notes on William Blake's 'The Tyger'. Toronto: Gauntlet, 1997. Print. --. Ms Cassie. Toronto: Gauntlet, 2000. Print. --. Lightfall. Toronto: Gauntlet, 2001. Print. TRADE EDITIONS OF OUTRAM'S POETRY REFERRED TO IN THIS PAPER Outram, Richard. Exsultate, Jubilate. Toronto: Macmillan, 1966. Print. --. Seer. Illus. Barbara Howard. Toronto: Aliquando, 1973. Print --. Turns and Other Poems. London/Toronto: Chatto & Windus with the Hogarth Press/ Anson-Cartwright, 1976. Print --. The Promise of Light. Toronto: Anson-Cartwright, 1979. Print. --. Selected Poems, 1960-1980. Toronto: Exile, 1984. Print. --. Man in Love. Erin: Porcupine's Quill, 1985. Print. --. Hiram and Jenny. Erin: Porcupine's Quill, 1988. Print. --. Mogul Recollected. Erin: Porcupine's Quill, 1993. Print. --. Benedict Abroad. Toronto: St. Thomas Poetry Sen, 1998. Print. --. Dove Legend. Erin: Porcupine's Quill, 2001. Print. OTHER WORKS BY RICHARD OUTRAM AND BARBARA HOWARD REFERRED TO IN THIS PAPER Outram, Richard. Brief Immortals. With reproductions of paintings by Barbara Howard. Port Hope: n.p., 2003. -- . Nine Shiners. With reproductions of paintings by Barbara Howard. Port Hope: n.p., 2003. GAUNTLET PRESS RECIPIENT LISTS Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. Outram (Richard Daley) Papers Finding Aid. MS Coll. 00457: Box 2 (fols. 14-25); Box 4 (fol. 3); Box 13 (fols. 2-5 and fols. 16-26). MS. 17 Aug. 2011. CORRESPONDENCE Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. Outram (Richard Daley) Papers Finding Aid. MS Coll. 00457: Box 18 (fol. 1); Box 25 (fol. 5) and (fol. 27). MS. 21 Dec. 2012. OTHER WORKS CONSULTED Carbert, Michael. "Faith and Resilience: An Interview with Richard Outram." New Quarterly: New Directions in Canadian Writing 89 (2004): 42-58. Print. Colombo, John Robert. The Poets of Canada. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1978. Print. Davenport, Guy. "Entropy." Canadian Notes and Queries 63 (2003): 7-10. Print. Donaldson, Jeffrey. Rev. of "Her Kindled Shadow…": An Introduction to the Work of Richard Outram, by Peter Sanger. Books in Canada 32.7 (2003): 36. Print. Griggs, Terry. "Wordman." Canadian Notes and Queries 63 (2003): 5. Print. "In Memoriam: Richard Outram (1930-2005)." The Antigonish Review 140 (2005): 5. Print. Jernigan, Amanda. "Hiram on the Night Shore." Canadian Notes and Queries 63 (2003): 6-7. Print. Jones, Evan. "So Much Beyond Oneself." PN Review 35.1 (2008): 64-66. Print. MacKendrick, Louis K. "Richard Outram, A Man in Love. (review)." Journal of Canadian Poetry 2 (1985): 79-82. Print. Ormsby, Eric. "Banjo Music." Canadian Notes and Queries 63 (2003): 16-17. Print. Outram, Richard. South of North: Images of Canada. Ed. Anne Corkett and Rosemary Kilbourn. Erin: Porcupine's Quill, 2007. Print. Reibetanz, Julia. "Poetry." University of Toronto Quarterly 72.1 (2002): 207-55. Print. Sanger, Peter. "A Word Still Dwelling." Canadian Notes and Queries 63 (2003): 29-31. Print. --. "Richard Outram: A Preface and Selections." Antigonish Review 125 (2001): 114-40. Print. --. "The Sounding Light: Richard Outram and Barbara Howard." New Quarterly: New Directions in Canadian Writing 21.4 (2001): 18-25. Print. ~~~~~~~~ By Patrick Warner Copyright of Canadian Literature is the property of Canadian Literature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. Back