The Hunt on the Lagoon

S.P. Zitner was born in New York City on April 20, 1924, and spent over three years with the US Army during World War II, two of them in the South Pacific. Upon his discharge, he took his BA at Brooklyn College, his MA at City College of New York and his PhD at Duke University. He taught English Literature at Hampton Institute, Virginia, and Grinnell College, Iowa, before coming to Canada to teach at Trinity College, University of Toronto. He remained at Trinity College from 1969 until his retirement 20 years later, and for exemplary teaching he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Sacred Letters. He died in Toronto on April 26, 2005 at the age of 81. Sheldon Zitner's academic work includes six books -- critical studies, editions and collections -- and numerous articles, most of them on Shakespeare and other Renaissance dramatists. His poetry has appeared in many American and Canadian journals, including the Nation, Poetry, the Antigonish Review, and Queen's Quarterly. Two earlier collections of poetry, The Asparagus Feast (1999) and Before We Had Words (2002), were published by McGill-Queen's University Press, and a chapbook, Missing Persons, was published by Junction Books in 2003.

The genial wit of ?Trial Epithet? informs the whole of this deeply moving collection by a poet and scholar whom A.F. Moritz describes as ?a man of the world in the best sense.? Whether he is celebrating life's infinite creativity, recognizing the joy imprisoned in a wheelchair-bound man, or affirming art's mission to outlast atrocity, Zitner unswervingly follows Rilke's injunction to join ?work of the eyes? with ?heart-work.? The Hunt on the Lagoon is a book about absence and loss, about the transience of bliss. But the sadness underlying Zitner's verse is always held in check by his characteristic urbanity and his epigrammatic wit.