Jay Macpherson

Jean Jay Macpherson (June 13, 1931 – March 21, 2012) was a Canadian lyric poet and scholar. The Encyclopædia Britannica calls her "a member of 'the mythopoeic school of poetry,' who expressed serious religious and philosophical themes in symbolic verse that was often lyrical or comic."

Jay Macpherson was born in London, England, in 1931. She was brought to Newfoundland in 1940 as a 'war guest'. She took high school at Bishop Spencer College, St. John's, and Glebe Collegiate, Ottawa. In 1951 Macpherson received a BA from Carleton College (now Carleton University) in 1951, followed by a year at University College in London. She received a BLS from McGill University, and then completed her MA and PhD at Victoria College, University of Toronto, both supervised by professor and critic Northrop Frye. Macpherson's two earlier volumes were incorporated into The Boatman (1957), a book which "gained her a considerable reputation. Dedicated to Northrop Frye and his wife, the collection reflects Frye's emphasis on the mythic and archetypal properties of poetry." The Boatman won the Governor General's Award in 1958. The Boatman of the title "is Noah, but both Noah and the ark itself form an allegory for the artist and the artistic experience, the ark representing Jung's collective unconscious." "Welcoming Disaster, has the critics baffled. They cannot agree on its proper interpretation is it a darker, more tragic vision or is the possibility of redemption there?" 1957:The Boatman. Toronto: Oxford University Press
1959:A Dry Light & The Dark Air. Toronto: Hawkshead Press
1968:The Boatman and Other Poems. Toronto: Oxford UP
1974:Welcoming Disaster: Poems, 1970 74. Toronto: Saannes Publications
1981:Poems Twice Told: The Boatman & Welcoming Disaster. Toronto: Oxford University Press

1962:The Four Ages of Man: The Classical Myths. Toronto: Macmillan

1972:Pratt’s Romantic Mythology: The Witches’ Brew. St. John's Nfld. : Memorial University
1974:"Beauty and the Beast" and Some Relatives. Toronto: Toronto Public Library
1982:The Spirit of Solitude: Conventions and Continuities in Late Romance. New Haven: Yale University Press

Except where otherwise noted, bibliographic information courtesy Brock University.

Weir, Lorraine. Jay Macpherson and Her Works Toronto: ECW Press, 1989.

Berner, Audrey. "The ‘Unicorn’ Poems of Jay Macpherson." Journal of Canadian Poetry 3 (1980): 9 16. "Comments (On the Practice of Alluding)." University of Toronto Quarterly 61.3 (1992): 381 390. Keith, W. J. "Jay Macpherson’s Welcoming Disaster: a Reconsideration." Canadian Poetry 36 (1995): 32 43. Weir, Lorraine. "Toward a Feminist Hermeneutics: Jay Macpherson's Welcoming Disaster," in Gynocritics/La Gynocritique Feminist Approaches to Writing by Canadian and Quebecoise Women, ed. Barbara Godard (Toronto: ECW P, 1987) 59 70. Namjoshi, Suniti. "In the Whale’s Belly: Jay Macpherson’s Poetry." Canadian Literature 79 (1978): 54 59. Reaney, James. "The Third Eye: Macpherson’s The Boatman." Canadian Literature 3 (1960): 23 34.