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Notes and Commentaries

Volume 01, Number 2 (1976)

No Heavenly Harmony: A Reading of Powassan's Drum

  • Fred Cogswell
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1976-06-06

Abstract

Duncan Campbell Scott's awareness of the imperfections of daily life is exposed in his apocalyptic poem, Powassan's Drum, whose flawed creator, the medicine man Powassan, drums into being a divided and doomed creation. Scott orchestrates a poem that shows humanity's hates and fears working through history, building up to an apocalyptic vision of a divided people unable to act in the face of destruction, and joining nature and humanity together in this cataclysm.