Reading Robert Kroetsch’s latest book of poetry, The Hornbooks of Rita K, is like walking down a long corridor lined with doors that open as you pass them—each with an idea standing in the doorway, half-heartedly blocking passage to yet another long corridor lined with doors.

Yet, certain ideas about poetry, the writing and the reading of it, recur as we cruise the labyrinth. Like the idea that poetry is not, or should not be, elitist: “To you, dear reader, frequenter of airport lounges—even a stand-by poem should tell you where you are,” (Hornbook #31). Or how about this from Hornbook #80: “Why are poems, like wine glasses and poisons, kept on a high shelf?”

Kroetsch, now 75 years old, is the author of numerous books of poetry, criticism and fiction, including The Studhorse Man, which won the 1969 Governor General’s Award.

The Hornbooks of Rita K, shortlisted for the 2001 Governor General’s Award for Poetry, took eight years to complete and is the result of more than half a life spent writing about and writing poetry.

On his relationship to the act of writing, Kroetsch says, “I’m not simply engaged in the pursuit of truth and beauty, since I have great reservations about truth, and find beauty hard to locate. That’s not true,” he laughs. “I guess I want writing to be very much in the world. It has a function, an important function in our lives, in terms of opening up possibilities…we live by narratives in a certain way, and writers investigate those narratives.”

Several poems in the book deliberately point to and ridicule the silly stigmas that sometimes surround poetry and the people who write it. The book is critical, yet full of humour and dazzling wit. It raises infinitely more questions than it answers, and often goes out of its way to subvert narrative structures that it has just created. It’s poetry about poetry, but never approaches the boredom of pedantry.

Playfulness permeates every poem in the book, a feature that Kroetsch hopes will get the reader to “laugh seriously,” but the playfulness never undercuts the philosophical magnitude of the ideas in the book.

If you feel that you’re journeying somewhere while reading The Hornbooks of Rita K, well, you might be, but only in a very roundabout way.

As Kroetsch tells me, “A good poem should take you walking.” However, he doesn’t say anything about where.