Poeta Doctus

Canada has lost another poet, Joe Rosenblatt.

Rosenblatt, though I knew him even less than Patrick Lane, played a more important role in my poetic development. He was the judge for the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild Ninth Annual Literary Awards (1981), Junior Poetry Category, and awarded my high school self honorary mention for a poem whose title I now mercifully forget.

I remember being told by people however seriously who knew him that he was a “misanthrope”, which kept me at a respectful distance during the awards ceremony and writers conference it was a part of. Nevertheless, the award cultured my confidence in my own budding talent not so much by his having chosen the poem, but by the musicality of his own poetry, an aspect of the art I valued very highly at the time, and still do, though hopefully in a more seasoned way.

Such a small blessing, nothing to him at the time, I’m sure, meant a world of affirmation to apprentice me. For that I remember him now, with an enduring gratitude.