Poets were once known for being critics of the reigning cultural paradigms of their day. One thinks of major poetic figures throughout the ages — Archilocus, Horace, Juvenal, Dante, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Shelley, Byron, Arnold, Yeats, Eliot, Auden, and Canada’s own Irving Layton, among a prestigious roster. Fiercely independent minds and judges of the prevailing temper, many, at least for a time, were considered outriders, eccentrics, and mavericks and occasionally ostracized. Recording their insights and critiques in memorable verse, they did not hesitate to skewer the clichés and political assumptions that their fellow citizens embraced.
