Smith, A. J. M.

A.J.M. Smith, in full Arthur James Marshall Smith, (born Nov. 8, 1902, Montreal—died Nov. 21, 1980, East Lansing, Mich., U.S.), Canadian poet, anthologist, and critic who was a leader in the revival of Canadian poetry of the 1920s.

As an undergraduate at McGill University in Montreal, Smith founded and edited the McGill Fortnightly Review (1925–27), the first literary magazine dedicated to freeing Canadian literature from artificial forms and narrow provincialism. He encouraged other young Canadian writers to become cosmopolitan in their outlook, to set high literary standards, and to study the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. After receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1932, Smith taught in the United States, mainly at Michigan State University (1936–72). He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1941.

In a series of anthologies beginning with The Book of Canadian Poetry (1943), Smith approached Canadian literature in a scholarly manner that set the tone for modern Canadian criticism. Later anthologies include The Blasted Pine (1957; rev. ed. 1967), edited with F.R. Scott, a collection of Canadian satiric and invective verse; and The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English and French (1960). In his own poetry, collected in volumes such as News of the Phoenix (1943), Collected Poems (1962), and Poems: New and Collected (1967), Smith displayed careful craftsmanship and metaphysical complexity and created powerful representations of the Canadian landscape (e.g., “The Lonely Land,” 1936).