PREVIEW 

F. R. SCOTT _JtRG* RET D Y BRUCE RUDDICK PATRICK A DE LLE SHA v 

MARCH 1942 
TATEMENT 
This is no magazine. It presents five Montre 1 writers who recently formed themselves into a group for the purpose of mutual discussion 
and crit cism an ho hope, through these selections, to try out their work before a some ha larger pubic. 
s the group takes sh pe, it becomes clerr th t general agreement ex t on several points. Among them are the folloiing. First, we 
ve lived long enough in Montreal to redliz the frustrating and inhibiting ffects of isolation. 11 anti-fascists, r feel that th existenc of a war bet een democratic culture and the paralysing forces of diet torship only int nsifie the riter's oblig~t on to work. o, mor than ever, creativ and exp rimer...t!.i.l v1ritin must b kept live . and there must be no retreat from the inte e tu 1 frontier -certainly no shoddy betr yal, on the lines of rchibal ~acLe sh, V Wyck Brooks and others, of those international forces hich combin in a ~ic sso, a Malraux or a Joyce. Secondly, the poets amongst us look for a.rd, perhaps optimist cally, to a possible fus on bet een the lyric and didactic elements in modern verse, a combination of vivid, arresting imagery and the capacity to "sing" with social content and critici m. 
Thirdly, we hope tom e contact, as a group, with new riting movements in England, the United States and other parts of Canada. We ill 
elcom such contributions as space and the aims expr s ed above p rmit. 
e have envisaged from the start a gradually id ning of our group to about t ice its resent size. And may we add that you can receive six 
issues of  ''PREVIEW"  for the  sum  of fifty cents,  amilable  to  any of  us.  
T THE  PLL T  
He  clean  the sinks,  the  wa  er  closets, urinal,  scrubs the floors  d  
hides himse  f,  ~she  alks,  behind  a  great tumble  of tissue to els and  

toilet paper. Hi s badly paid, hates his work but like all of us has his secrets. 
What does he look like? I see his sharp dark face usually half masked behind his large paper load. His hair is greased and shins like black marble. His eyebro s are large, immob le like spun iron. 
He likes to talk and he and I have large conversations beside the burette stand or in the moderately clean lav~tory ·et aside for foremen and engine rs. I'm not an engineer but own a key to their 
excretory sanctum. 
In a ay he i symbol to me of hard insistent ork, of a kind of hidden protes mixed with impotent longings and dreams to wh ch he hang on like a life belt. 
I have said that he hates his ork but still he does it. His hate s a 
small one. I don't think that it ever bothers him because of those secret dreams of his. He tells me about some leading up to th m 1th 
an impressive series of irrelevant generalities which gradually get more concrete as get to h s point. 
"I am free now, " he says, eaning at night. "I like to be free. When I have a dollar I can sped it. When I want to go to the movies, I go. When I am thirs y, I drink. If I want to play ith the children I play." Then with the slightest lo ering of pitch, the subtlest empha is, 
'And hen I want to make a ring, I make one." 
I say " h' because I kno e have arrived 


He puts down his brush broom to dig in his pocket. "Stainless st Pl," he says. A simple thing, smoothly tooled, it flashes against his yellow brown hands. "It takes much work. Many nights. But I could sell it 
if I wanted to. · Stainless steel." His wortls caress it and he turns it so that it c~tches the light. "It's more valuable than gold or silver, isn't it?" This seriously. 
ThQt time I am foolish enough to dissillusion him. I can be quite a fool sometimes. 
He talks in the same manner of his life in relation to the world. I could reomaticize a good deal on what he has to say about thls. He 
always goes through the same song and dance though, a flood of principles, all of which are irrelevant, but somehow take him to the goal he is aiming at. Once when he complained of the harshness of his work compared to others, "They walk around with a piece of paper and leak big." ("They are of.flee workers.) "They're no more important than us. Why should they live on the mountain while we:· 11ve in this dirty air." 
I offer trade unions tentatively for I want to see what will happen. 
Well, he std.rts on his "when I want" series agaln. "When I want to buy a coat, I buy a coat. No one 1s going to tell me." He puts his toilet paper down at this point and is very noisy while I become uneasy and hear some grunts .from a neighboring water closet. "When I want to go out d.t night, I go." His face is now quite animated. "No unions. You can take your unions before they take my pay." This amuses him so we laugh. 
Sombody yells for him so he curses and leaves me with his jigsaw 
thoughts. 
Lately he has been over industrious and is continually scurrying from one place I knew nothing mf to another. He has only time, now and then, to pelt me with a few hurried words which mean nothing except that he has seen me and ants me to know it. We are very grave when we make our brief recognitions or, at least, only jocular in the most judicious manner. 
The watchman tells me that his wife beats him but I can't believe this. 
Neufville Sha • 
Brother -You of the City 
0 you in line buying Your city ill fall Your bargains and liquor The streets 111 be bare Your balcony tickets Gras~ will be there To watch play men dying, And slugs on the walls. 
In corner of wharf You -.dull to the -omen You were free to loaf, Will trespass in woods To toss chips and laugh, And hunt season's goods To stare and to starve. And be dead in autumn, 
Free to find Cathay -And over your heads The cinema Friday Squat guttural beasts, Aphrodis ac Saturday No column rests, And sleep over Sunday. No, nor oman with beads. 
Bruce Ruddick. 
Remembering the Villag 
Ri erside life was so uneventful and friends so few that a visit to Miss p:t cottage was something eternally exciting. When people came to stay with us we would take them to see her, just as we would drive 
them  over  to Ide  Hill  to  see  the vie,  or  go  into Sevenoaks  and show  
of  Knole  Po.rk.  Ho  ever  faint it might b e,  fo  our  lives  ere  in so  
many  ays  identical,  we  ere  conscious of  a  iff rence,  a most  a  

foreigness, in Miss P' personalty and world. Her enthusiasm as almost over-bright, her cottage almost too lyrical, her features e med 'French" even if her accent as no mpeccable. "Sh 's an awful 1 ar," 
m. mother would say, me~ning she as inclined to build up the stories she to d for ef ect. he had a ay of gra p ng things that she like, of try n on one of my mother's hats and dee ding that it really su t d her mych better, w th the result that she fin·lly went off with it. On the other hand she was absur ly generou. 
At O ford I would be with people a 1th me, talking, eating, play~ 
ing b lliards and I soon got so used to meeting celebrities th~t I 
occas onally declined an invitation to meet the ell-known Mr. o-and
so -but at Riv rsid I remember I as bitterly disappointed if ss P had prom ed to come to tea and then did not turn up. 
Ir m er ho quiet the village became at night, a quietness of houses collected in. themselves and in ardly creaking, the village peace expressed and confirmed hen the church clock struck and the be~u iful 
enor b 1 uspended-its notes n the air. It did not r ach to the outlying subur an districts. After the clock there ould be again the 
lence or the sound, the atmo pheric pr ssure, of a country even ng, say in ut mn, and th o ls ould be hooting in th valley and a slo tr in coming up the dist ce. he air would smell ov rwhelmingly of the country, e en though this was scarcely country at al. , and there would be that feel of land and ild life, of lonely farmhouses and silent oods, wh ch I shall a ways associate more w th cro ded England than with the true wilds of Canad or the United States. 
The main London Road ould be almost deserted; once clear of the village streets it had no lights; after ten the glow from the pubs dis ppeared also, and the whole plac.e as r pped in an obscurity which revealed as much a i hid -the shape, more the fse, of red-brick facade, the vi lage and country smells, the chuckling of spring ater in the drinking fountain, the sound of footst ps as someone alked in from the railway station. Above the little square the churchyard ro .e steeply and the church spire ould be outlined against the sky. It was now that the villag crune in o its own. ever picture que like some of 
ts neighbors, or like the self-consciously erfect villages of the Cot wolds or New England, it had at n ght thi shut-in an peaceful qual ty, as t_ough it nestled contentedly on the threshold of a tremendously lonely and in nitely my ter ous country, a country here Roman roads came alive and little ocal wandering trains ost themselves forever. 
I would walk up the unlighted stretch to ards .iss P's cottage and turn off along a narro path bet een tal hedges. 1s P's cottage w~s one oft o, set ell back from the road, both 1th th ir small gardens in front of them. he lived in the farther of th two, the ne.e.rer cottage she et out to a rather difficu t. family who ·alternately cadged on her and sho ·ered her with insults. his family was remarkable for having produced a daughter, Florrie, ho was something of a poetess. he would lie abo tin the g~rden in herb thing-sit si ultaneously ~cquiring the suntan prescribed by the papers and riting her odes and h n Mis P passed through s e ould look p bright_y with 'Oh, hell-o, Miss P. Glorious eath r 're havin', isn't t? y ay, ay think your flowers are just too marvelous, aren't they? Just too lovely••• " -and so on, all with that infinitely patronis ng air tha the orking-cl ss snob, who lives in a orld of socie y columns and 
ovie actres es, adopts to drds the genteel poor. Later she seemed to have given up her poetry. She found a friend of heron age ho d hair as platinum blonde as heron and the to of them used to ander elegantly through the vill ge ccompanied by Peine s they ha either borrowed or hired for the occ sion. 

One of the nice things about Miss P was that she was. nearly always in and liked nothing better than to be visited. She was one of those absolutely inv Ju.able people ho say, ncome in, how nice of you to come and see me," and then add, "Won't you have some tea -the kettle's just on the boil" -and end up by providing cakes and sandwiches o.S well. In the green recess of its g~rden her cottage radiat d friendliness, an open attitude, as though it was not afraid of being found out. This perhaps explatned why the oddest people and things were always happening to Miss P. If any mysterious stranger were· to tap on a window, if any respectable character were to fall down dead drunk, it was sure to be on her window hat he tapped, on her path that he sprawled. Such events became even mere extraordinary when sh.e recounted them; you could see the anecdote develope each time she plunged into it with her -"My dear, the oddest thing happened last night ••• " Perhaps it was that nothing very exciting ever did happen to us_ and so, being imaginative people, we had to make the most of what did -I probably .am dramatis ng Riverside as I write a~out t. 
There ere two rooms and a small hall-way on the ground floor of her cottage and everything in them was not merely an expression of her per• sonality but a sort of translation into visible form of innocence and naivete and optimism-rrand the words that go with these -bright, jolly, fresh, child-like, nice, God. The blue tea-cups, fine in colour but of a servicable cheap quality, were an embodiment of the "anyway the sky 1s free" philosophy; the chairs looked as though they might say at any moment, with a note of jaunty clich, 'Of course we're old, but we•re comfortdb e; the water co ours reminded me of -"How nice it bad been in Italy that summer/" Numerous "reflections," between chil ren's photos pinned up over the beautiful old writing-table and wooden dogs and the Della Robbia Christ-child, between the sleepy puppy by the fire and the riding-crops in the hall and the empty bottle of Chianti, all created a sensation that the place hung together, achieved an emotional harmony. It was all supremely reflectable, because its ma.in quality was light physical airiness and a certain emotional airiness too, a quality that chould be often breathless dnd sometimes over-done but which was nearly al ays refreshing. 
There were times, of course, when the ronm actually out-shone Miss P, when her face grew heavy and tired in them dst of all her cheerful belongings. More an mated than most she seemed also to reflect a dull weariness more e~sily than others -my mother's face would shine optimistical as ever in repose, but hers became set and painfully vacant, her dumpy figure and black clothes making her apparent disi lusionment almost brutally solid. Such tiredness often came after a bout with the tiresome neighbors. 
I can only remember vaguely what it was that Miss .P and I talked about. It was a little more about books, about poetry, than the ordinary English conversation; it had a touch_here and there of understand1ng, as between two nliterary" people; it was mostly, I imd.gine, sheer comfortab e atmosphere and the sa.tisfaction of having a friendly and admiring audience which made me feel I could talk, and to talk Wci.S more important than what one actually .said. Certainly we had little in common. I thought her poems -"rhymes" was her word for them -too sentimental, she considered mine dreadfully obscure. I laughed cruelly at her unsquashability, she thought of me as "clean-limbed", than which there was nothing I loathed more. Her conception of Youth -someth ng tall and lithe that wrestled with sin and ran off triumphant into the clean winds -made me sick. I did my best to chock her when I was in my teens, but it was never much use. Patrick Anderson. 
ADVICE 
Bew.are the casual need By ich the heart is bound, 
Pluck out the quickening seed That rests on stony ground. 
Resist the shallow gain, The accent of an hour. Escape, by early pain, The death before the flower. 
F. R. Scott. 
NEW DEAD . 
I think of those who falling between my words, burn out unnoticed like a summer's bee: those planted green in the forest of smoke and wtre, those carrying down into a sea of acid the neat white bodies of bathers. 
Killed as time floods the writing hand, their death ls harde.r and more obscure than any poem; madness in images tormenting them from delirium and the drum they are changed strangely by pain•s metaphors, yet leave an unread book, who die for culture. 
In this green landscape see their landscape's failure; sun shuts and shines, trees wither and remain, fields painted with too rich a paste decline to last when memory's gone,the casual strollers blaze with a final look and then a bird is slowly flying out of the eyes of the dead. 
Patrick Anderson. 
PORTRAIT 
It was on a hot August afternoon . in a remote section-of suburbia that the pasty-faced boy knocked, asked to be he~ little lodger:ahe showed him up the dark-brown stairs and opened the door into a tea-brown room, he put down bis suitcase and his typewriter and smiled his furry smile she didn't know his face was the race of a spy, 
.she didn't know he was a deserter. 
There were the things to unpack, the valises, the feel of the traveller, the valise of clothes, the valise of wrinkled flesh; then anked, his feet struck in the carpet to flesh the prowling rose, he was returned unloved·from the closet mirror as sour milk and cinders; the key was turned in the door and the locked worm of light switched on, the curtains close, though the day outside was flagged with the cries of children and all the drawers were lined with newspaper. 
He undressed the false plant in the window with the genuine leaf, untied all the bows and found their pubic dust, gave mats their secrets and a bell to the jug, wrote love in the bed of brass: the landlady below knew neither his fear nor his way with her furniture, nor ho when fear drained fancy he would st~re 1n terrible vacancy at a pattern of two roses round a twig or the leather buttons walking her horsehair sofa. 
Patrick Anderson 
CAPITAL SQUARE 
Danger is silent in the bloodless square: the boxing brute or stone half hides his fist, the moon· in the haunt of' weight is a heavy ghost and the sun is a toastmaster, the punishing facades disguise their skill and fountains play before the parliament of stand-still. 
/' 


You may go freely through the paved immense slowness, the architectural snow; admire the statues stiffened in the silence with No upon their lips and the heart at zero, until having made some circles you understand you are a pigmy held in a stone hand. 
No warmth 1 here, only an abstract good; your dead shall never bleed nor your love return; children ask here no gifts nor the hungry rood••• but now and then four walls or added men swing into symmetry, with a stone noise harden and echo at a statue's voice. 
Patrick Anderson 
POEM 
Great interlacing waters Greenspotted with islands which surrender never. As memories through a dead oblivion, The world caught by the sun Spins its rigid dance Pushing us through ineluctable rythms.Just sifting the varied sea silt 
e catch the under bones of Things.Hidden behind leafy arabesquesWe live on islands built In waters which interlace. Yet ships bear different flags,Hose the skies with foreign smokes, And wink distantly to their neighbours. 
Neufville Shaw 
RECOVERY 
Now thought seeks shelter, lest the heart melt In the iron rain, the brain bend Under the bombs ot news. Fearfully the mind's hands digIn the debris of thought, for the lovely body of faith. Is she alive after this shock, does she yet breathe? Oh say that she lives she is our, imperishable,S that the crypt stood. 
e had no right to hope, no claim to defense. We bad played in the hanging gardens, lain in the sun On a roof o~ glass. We bad given no thoughtTo the deep soil of the base, the sunken shafts Resting on rock. We loved the facade More than the wall, the ivy more than the stone. We took our gifts for our gains; we fed without ploughing. 
: But she lives, it is true, the eyes glow.The lips are firm under the pain, they move, It is our name that is spoken. 
0 clutch her to you, bPing her triumphant forth. Stand by her side now, scatter the panzer doubts. She 1s more dear after this swift assault, More one and alone, an ultimate. In her sure presence only there is strength. 
This sharp blow pulls the excesses down, Strips off the ornament, tightens the nerve, Bares limbs for movement and the forward march. More roads are opened than are closed by bombs And truth stands naked under the flashing charge. 
F. R. Scott