THE CREATING WORD: PAPERS FROM AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE LEARNING AND TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN THE 1980s. Edited by Patricia Demers. Edmonton, University of Alberta Press, c1986. 215pp, cloth, $24.95, ISBN 0-88864-092-7. CIP Professional Reviewed by S. Keith Ward Volume 14 Number 3 1986 May Conference proceedings are notoriously uneven and discontinuous, and the person who purchases them usually does so with the expectation of getting some chaff with the wheat. As editor Patricia Demers points out in her introduction, however, there is a unifying principle behind this collection of papers from a recent conference at the University of Alberta. These eleven essays, Demers says, "celebrate the capacity of the word to illumine and liberate, engage and trascend, unburden and connect." What also becomes clear in the book is that none of'the contributors have much sympathy for modern deconstructionist doctrines. All are working with the assumption that a novelist or poet means what s/he says. This common commitment ranges from an extended and erudite rebuttal of deconstruct ion ism by M.H. Abrams, to tacit assumption of traditionalist techniques in more practical essays. Jacques Barzuri contributes a paper tracing the loss of the value of rhetorical rightness back to a misappropriation of the natural science model of knowing by the language sciences. Louise Rosenblatt argues that a poem is a "transaction" between text and reader, but eschews the subjectivism of reader response theory. Then follow essays on the various genres of the teaching of language and literature by Robin Skelton (poetry), Norman Page (the novel), Rowland McMaster (the novel), Rudy Wiebe (creative writing), John Dixon (narrative writing), Martha King (language arts), Keith Smillie (the computer and language/literature), and Susan Jackal (Canadian literature). This collection of essays is worthwhile for those who are concerned with the teaching of writing and literature from elementary through post-secondary levels. Notes follow most of the essays. S. Keith Ward, The King's College. Edmonton, Alta.