This essay seeks to elucidate the tensions between the necessarily provisional categories of "reality" and "the imagination" in the Canadian poet-critic Louis Dudek's writings of the 1950s and 1960s in general, and in his self-reflexive and increasingly autobiographical poetry in particular. Examining Dudek's meta-poetry (poetry about poetry), it demonstrates how Dudek's earliest self-reflexive poems and privately recorded musings reveal a much more nuanced understanding of the phenomenal world and the imagination's role in poetry than his earliest polemics suggest.

Please see 'Notes' below for any suggested/official citation information added by the author(s) of this work. Otherwise, you can cite the HSS Commons instance of this publication as follows:

• Jensen, G., (2021), "Towards the “Infinite Poem” Reality and the Imagination in the 1950s and 1960s Meta-Poetry of Louis Dudek", HSSCommons: (DOI: 10.25547/RCZF-E254)

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1. ludus
2. Mikhail Bakhtin
3. paidia
4. play
5. possibility spaces
6. Roger Caillois
7. video games

Original publication information:

Jensen, Graham H. “Towards the ‘Infinite Poem’: Reality and the Imagination in the 1950s and 1960s Meta-Poetry of Louis Dudek.” Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews 70 (2012): 45-76.