(beautiful clean dj of G-G winning book for poetry, Ryerson, 1943; designed by Thoreau MacDonald)
(signed copy of A.J.M. Smith: Collected Poems; Oxford U Press, 1962)
A.J.M. Smith–Arthur James Smith (1902-1980) was a member of the Montreal Group which included Leo Kennedy, A.M. Klein, and F.R. Scott. Smith worked with Scott to publish a magazine of modernist poetry. He, along with Scott in his “The Canadian Authors Meet”, and their The Blasted Pine, spoofed and satirized the genteel post-Victorian Canadian generation before them.
His own best-known poem is “The Lonely Land” which pays homage to the Group of 7’s interpretations of Canadian landscapes. Smith and Scott can both be heard reading on the Folkways LP/CD Six Toronto Poets. Later, Smith became an American citizen and taught at Michigan State College from 1936 to 1972, though he kept a summer cottage in Canada.