Jane Again

In his sixties, Yeats published the half-dozen poems that drew Crazy Jane out from his imagination to act as a profane voice against the strictures of the Church and the mores of the age. Wayne Clifford, in his sixties, let a lifetime of wondering why Yeats offered so little explanation of Jane’s human presence settle into his imagination, and let Jane free herself out of the dead to speak once more. In Jane Again , we learn why Jane is crazy, if indeed she is, what part her Jack has played in her passion, how she understands the nature of the divine, and who she insists herself to be in this world almost large enough to hold her. A series of linked sonnets by a master sonneteer, Jane Again is almost always bawdy, irreverent and humorous; it is also loving, moving and beautiful, and should help to cement Clifford’s reputation as one of the most inventive versifiers to come out of Canada in years.