Summer of Bowering: June

Daniel Zomparelli

In the Summer of Bowering, Geist blog­ger and Poetry Is Dead mag­a­zine Editor-in-Chief Daniel Zomparelli will be review­ing George Bowering’s lat­est poetry col­lec­tion, My Darling Nellie Grey. The col­lec­tion is divided into twelve chap­ters, named for each month of the year, and Zomparelli will review one chap­ter a week all sum­mer long.  

This week has been hec­tic to say the least. With Geist’s move, Poetry Is Dead’s dead­line, and my con­stant need to name the drops of sweat on my fore­head, I decided to let you enjoy the visu­als of Bowering accord­ing to my book­shelf. Taking a look at the books and his poetry from thirty years ago, there are large style changes from then to now. This chap­ter was his response to famous ques­tions posed by famous writ­ers. Notable poems are “T.S. Eliot” in which he tells him to “shove it” and the poem “Sappho” in which his reply to “To what, O beloved bride­groom, may I com­pare you?” and his response being “If you sug­gest a summer’s day/I’ll walk off this island.” Overall the chap­ter is fun and humor­ous. A light chap­ter for a siz­zling hot sum­mer week.

Enjoy the photo essay.

You can fol­low along with Summer of Bowering by buy­ing My Darling Nellie Grey at Talon Books. If you have a review for this chap­ter, please post it in the com­ment section.

Summer of Bowering: May

Daniel Zomparelli

In the Summer of Bowering, Geist blog­ger and Poetry Is Dead mag­a­zine Editor-in-Chief Daniel Zomparelli will be review­ing George Bowering’s lat­est poetry col­lec­tion, My Darling Nellie Grey. The col­lec­tion is divided into twelve chap­ters, named for each month of the year, and Zomparelli will review one chap­ter a week all sum­mer long.  

The May chap­ter is a glance through the trav­els of George Bowering in Europe. He uses his writing/notes from his trip in May of 1966 to write the poems of this chap­ter, which is a great way to form poems of your own. Taking the words you have already writ­ten to inspire new works is always a great sug­ges­tion as a writ­ing prompt.

To keep the Summer of Bowering inter­est­ing, I will refrain from a review of this chap­ter, and instead, post my favourite poem from the month of May (with per­mis­sion of Talon Books). Enjoy!

The Greek relics

By George Bowering

In Hellas, noth­ing has changed in 2500 years.

The kiosks in Constitution Square offer Teen Muscles magazines,

along with chew­ing gum, worry beads and Henry Miller books.

I was look­ing at the back of the head of a lovely young

blonde woman from north­ern Europe. Her shiny face

had been a foot from Poseidon’s bronze groin

for fif­teen minutes.

                                    One was sur­rounded by marble,

by the cen­turies of men strug­gling with their chisels.

But at the rain-threatened Acropolis

            a short homely Greek guard

            hoiked and spat on the Parthenon floor.

From up there Athens was a wide clus­ter of white buildings.

Down there again it was a crush of peo­ple in black.

You can fol­low along with Summer of Bowering by buy­ing My Darling Nellie Grey at Talon Books. If you have a review for this chap­ter, please post it in the com­ment section.

Summer of Bowering: April

Daniel Zomparelli

In the Summer of Bowering, Geist blog­ger and Poetry Is Dead mag­a­zine Editor-in-Chief Daniel Zomparelli will be review­ing George Bowering’s lat­est poetry col­lec­tion, My Darling Nellie Grey. The col­lec­tion is divided into twelve chap­ters, named for each month of the year, and Zomparelli will review one chap­ter a week all sum­mer long.  

I was stum­bling through the inter­net and hap­pened upon this. It’s a quick overview of the entire book by Isola di Rifiuiti, in case you only want a week of Bowering, or a few days.

The April chap­ter is by far one of my favourite pieces. The poems reflect cul­ture that is igno­rant — to say the least — and forces the reader not to look away. What we see here is racism, sex­ism, homo­pho­bia and the weird edi­to­r­ial of the NRA and KKK. These small snap­shots of some­times entirely found poems, stir anger in all the right ways. 

As a note of how much anger these poems can stir: one of the first poems I read when I picked up this book was “Many, many,” a poem that uses homo­pho­bic edi­to­r­ial to write itself, and thought George Bowering was being prej­u­dice, but I quickly picked up on the fact that these were not his ideas. Let’s just say there was a thought bub­ble float­ing above my head and it had a bag of poop burn­ing on his front porch. Thankfully I read on, and the bag of poop thought bub­ble popped … fig­u­ra­tively speaking.

Another note of appre­ci­a­tion for this chap­ter is the poems that broke up the deranged edi­to­r­ial, with ekphras­tic snap­shots. The poems detailed an image in such a way that you could visu­al­ize a newspaper/website/other source Bowering used to pro­duce the son­nets (what he is refer­ring to as U.S. Sonnets). The snap­shots he details cre­ate an image that is impos­si­ble to remove from your mind once it is in place.

This chap­ter instantly reminded me of the work of Nikki Reimer in her book [sic] and Jonathon Wilcke’s newest book Dupe! (both of which I highly rec­om­mend you pick up a copy). It has this raw qual­ity to it, that rages the reader. These polit­i­cal minded poems are quite smart in their sub­tle way of hit­ting a nerve. My only rec­om­men­da­tion is that you not read this chap­ter on a relax­ing day at the beach. Trust me, it really doesn’t help you relax.

You can fol­low along with Summer of Bowering by buy­ing My Darling Nellie Grey at Talon Books. If you have a review for this chap­ter, please post it in the com­ment section.

How To Remain, Heather Haley Book Launch

Daniel Zomparelli

Geist Contributor Heather Susan Haley will be launch­ing her most recent col­lec­tion of poetry Three Blocks West of Wonderland. A book that is gritty, fun, polit­i­cal and a kick in the pants. The full review will be appear­ing in Poetry Is Dead’s sec­ond issue (launch­ing August 2010), but for now, you can enjoy her poem and videopoem “How To Remain.” We hope to see you at the launch of her book in Vancouver! (details below)

How To Remain

How to remain

thin. Abstain.

Abstain from eating

food. Calories kill

the fat rats first.

If she could say No

and bal­ance Belgian truffles

on her tongue, briefly,

before spit­ting them out,

she might remain. Live

long. Enjoy fruition.

By shun­ning urges,

she could linger,

dainty as a colt’s foot,

deploy­ing her charms raw,

dogtrot­ting a strad­dled chocolate

Arabian through mazes of lane.

She could retire

to her body.

Alas, ankles thicken, braids recede,

the old mare conjured

when­ever she dare to look.

Fight back. She may be forced to

cover the grey, yellow,

but refuses to swal­low diet pills.

Amphetamines in the olden days.

Dinner in the garbage

rouses nig­gles of guilt.

She snuf­fles it out before Buddy can,

barf­ing rather than blowing

calo­ries on fusty pizza

or mold­ing, olive oil-sopped arugula.

Three Blocks West of Wonderland Multimedia Book launch party!

Join Heather Haley and friends with host Kedrick James at a mul­ti­me­dia extrav­a­ganza to cel­e­brate the pub­li­ca­tion of her newest col­lec­tion of poetry, Three Blocks West of Wonderland. Enjoy read­ings and per­for­mances by Heather and spe­cial guests poets/authors Peter Trower, Jenn Farrell, Shannon Rayne with music by Heather’s punk rock com­rade in arms-Impatient Youth, Sleepers, Woundz and No Alternative alumnus-Chris Coon who will be joined by Fond Of Tigers’ Shanto Bhattacharya! It’s the world PREMIERE as well of our new videopo­ems, “HOW TO REMAIN” and “BUSHWHACK!” and we are all wel­come to join in the W2 Folk Festival after-parties for 1/2 price ($5) start­ing at 10:30pm.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

7:00pm — 10:00pm

W2 @ Storyeum

151 W. Cordova

Vancouver, BC

Summer of Bowering: March

Daniel Zomparelli

In the Summer of Bowering, Geist blog­ger and Poetry Is Dead mag­a­zine Editor-in-Chief Daniel Zomparelli will be review­ing George Bowering’s lat­est poetry col­lec­tion, My Darling Nellie Grey. The col­lec­tion is divided into twelve chap­ters, named for each month of the year, and Zomparelli will review one chap­ter a week all sum­mer long.  

In Bowering’s third chap­ter, “Eggs in There,” he plays around with mem­ory and what could be mem­ory. Nostalgia reins supreme in the chap­ter as he details events of his child­hood. I have to say that, in regards to poetry, this chap­ter didn’t work for me, prob­a­bly because I don’t deal well with lyric prose. That’s not to say there wasn’t many lik­able qual­i­ties about this chapter.

Bowering starts each poem with “I REMEMBER” and delves into his past. The smok­ing 1940’s or 1950’s (I have to guess since Bowering is seventy-five and his age range in the sec­tion is 5 – 20) is the back­drop, and it recalls a time when smok­ing and drink­ing cof­fee was a gen­eral pas­time. Which I def­i­nitely miss; some­thing about drink­ing a cof­fee and then not smok­ing makes it feel like it’s only half of the process (says the ex-smoker). I digress. The thing I like about this chap­ter is its sim­plic­ity and how it begs the ques­tion of mem­ory. What do we remem­ber, what do we think we remem­ber, what do we not remem­ber. All of these mem­o­ries and/or non-memories all come together to cre­ate the past we build within our minds.

Since the chap­ter was slightly less than inter­est­ing to me, my review needed a lit­tle umph, so I took My Darling Nellie Grey to the class I teach at an addic­tion detox cen­tre as part of the Megaphone Magazine Creative Writing Program. I read them a cou­ple pieces from Bowering’s book, asked them to start their pieces with I REMEMBER, and here are our results (posted with their per­mis­sion, of course). I sug­gest you try it too.

I REMEMBER

by Brent

I REMEMBER how I looked for­ward to Labour Day, when our fam­ily went down to Portland to help our friends down there cel­e­brate the US hol­i­day. What I enjoyed about it were the fire­works and the aura of hap­pi­ness, and how friendly every­body was. It was always sad on the Sunday when we would return, but always gave me some­thing to look for­ward to in July.

I REMEMBER

by Godfrey Marten Hill

I REMEMBER when it was May 10, ’78, over­time, too many men. I can’t believe it. Why did the ref call it? As a young kid I didn’t under­stand it. It was over­time, just let them play. Short story, we lost the cup again. Then Mom asks me to go to the store for smokes and bacon. As I walk my dog Sparky, tears run down my face because we could and would have beaten the Rangers for the Cup. Sparky was used to run­ning with me to the store, how­ever, not today. He reached up and took my hand in his mouth and tried to run with me. Sorry dog, not today.

I REMEMBER

by Daniel Zomparelli

I REMEMBER the hole in the house where the bees used to live. The hole was too high up for us to plug it, so we just waited for win­ter. I remem­ber the buzz that came from the attic. I remem­ber open­ing the attic door, the echo the wind made pass­ing through, think­ing this is where we put her after she left — like the Christmas dec­o­ra­tions. I thought she was hid­ing at the edge, where the floors fell through. Or maybe she was the bees or the sticky honey, or maybe she was sleep­ing and I was the one haunt­ing her dreams.

You can fol­low along with Summer of Bowering by buy­ing My Darling Nellie Grey at Talon Books. If you have a review for this chap­ter, please post it in the com­ment section.

Summer of Bowering: February

Daniel Zomparelli

In the Summer of Bowering, Geist blog­ger and Poetry Is Dead mag­a­zine Editor-in-Chief Daniel Zomparelli will be review­ing George Bowering’s lat­est poetry col­lec­tion, My Darling Nellie Grey. The col­lec­tion is divided into twelve chap­ters, named for each month of the year, and Zomparelli will review one chap­ter a week all sum­mer long.  

In case you missed last week’s post, here is a video of George Bowering read­ing from the January chap­ter of My Darling Nellie Grey.

Reading the February chap­ter of My Darling Nellie Grey made me think about how hard it is to be the less fun per­son in a rela­tion­ship. Everyone gets excited when you walk through the door and asks, “where’s your part­ner?” Your blank stare shows that your part­ner is not with you, and soon every­one at the party is say­ing, “oh, it’s too bad your part­ner couldn’t make it.” This, I felt, was one of the under­ly­ing themes of the February chap­ter, which I loved.

Never have I been more moved by poems that con­tin­ued to return to some­one (George Bowering) being pantsed in the kitchen. And even with his pants down, Bowering main­tained a lov­ing tone. As some­one who is being pantsed by my part­ner on a reg­u­lar basis, the pants­ing hit all the right chords. Having that fun and wild part­ner who bal­ances out the quiet writer is some­thing I know all too well.

The love theme in this chap­ter was a nice sur­prise that con­trasted well with the chap­ter before. In the chap­ter January, the nar­ra­tor is alone, in his thoughts, in his space, and in his writ­ing. Writing is a soli­tary task, but Bowering moves to a gen­tler and com­i­cal tone in the chap­ter February. I was laugh­ing, I was moved, and by the end of it, my pants had dropped as well.

Bowering gen­er­ated the poems in the chap­ter February based off of his “wife’s comic acts in the kitchen.” To do so, he used min­i­mal­ism, keep­ing the poems set as “two stan­zas of short lines highly atten­tive to the sounds of vow­els and con­so­nants.” His atten­tion to form allows some of the poems to hit like a punch line. The first poem had me in stitches. A sim­ple, matter-of-fact tone and an epi­gram style make this poem spec­tac­u­lar. The musi­cal­ity of the poetry makes the poems slip­pery, quick, much like the char­ac­ter Bowering is attempt­ing to por­tray. Wonderful pieces to be read aloud.

One of the great­est things a writer writ­ing in English can do is show how to fall in love using only the words of the English lan­guage. Yes, it is all a bit lovey dovey and mushy, but Bowering man­ages this in less than a month’s time (28 days) of poems, it is February after all.

You can fol­low along with Summer of Bowering by buy­ing My Darling Nellie Grey at Talon Books. If you have a review for this chap­ter, please post it in the com­ment section.

Summer of Bowering: January

Daniel Zomparelli

In the Summer of Bowering, Geist blog­ger and Poetry Is Dead mag­a­zine Editor-in-Chief Daniel Zomparelli has set out to review George Bowering’s lat­est poetry col­lec­tion, My Darling Nellie Grey. The col­lec­tion is divided into twelve chap­ters, named for each month of the year, and Zomparelli will review one chap­ter a week all sum­mer long.  

An inter­est­ing thing about My Darling Nellie Grey, aside from the fact that it is 415 pages, is the intro­duc­tion, in which Bowering tells the reader how the pieces in the book were formed. Bowering wrote a poem every day for a year. At the end of every month, he pub­lished the poems he wrote that month in a chap­book. At the end of the year, he com­bined all of the chap­books to cre­ate My Darling Nellie Grey, which reads like many seper­ate poems, but also, to some extent, as one epic poem. In the intro­duc­tion, Bowering also reflects on the themes of each chap­ter of My Darling Nellie Grey, which I will dis­cuss here each week. This small insight into the writ­ing process gives the reader a light entry into the poems. His first chap­ter, writ­ten in January, deals a lot with how to see the world through poetry.

I am not a fan of poetry that reflects on poetry, and the January chap­ter of My Darling Nellie Grey does just that. Still, I was able to see past the poetry about poetry and was able to enjoy it as more of a char­ac­ter study of an aging artist. Bowering presents a nar­ra­tor who is writ­ing a poem every day for a month. He dis­cusses the feel­ing of despair he feels as a writer — which is a lit­tle too “Stranger Than Fiction” for me, but I got past that too. The nar­ra­tor debates whether his life has been that of a fool or that of a wise man. He knows he has wasted his time, and asks if his words will live on? This reminds me of Shakespeare and how most writ­ers’ con­cern is immor­tal­ity. And yes, I am ref­er­enc­ing Shakespeare, so shoot me. In the line “that in black ink my love may still shine bright” from Sonnet 65, Shaekspear argues the immor­tal­ity of words. Bowering, on the other hand, dis­cusses nature as ever­last­ing and human­ity as being destruc­ted by cur­rent envi­ron­men­tal crises. Thus, human­ity will come to an end, and with it, words will too. With humans destroy­ing each other and the world, how can a writer hope his words will live on once the human race has left this earth? And not in an E.T. way.

This brings me to my favourite poem in My Darling Nellie Grey, which was writ­ten on January 4^th, four years ago. Bowering dis­cusses the state of cor­po­rate fat-catism and con­sumerism of the time. He starts with, “Whether to know,/or just abide,/to lie on your back/these last days.” Here the nar­ra­tor con­tem­plates his state as a con­sumer. Does one lie back and let the world fall apart because it is eas­ier to ride a car or use all of the prod­ucts that cor­po­ra­ti­za­tions sup­plies us with? The nar­ra­tor rejects this ideal, and goes on to reject the “oppressor’s” ways. He fin­ishes the poem with, “let his carcass/ooze oil when he sits/in his extra wide/reclining chair.” And if you are not think­ing of the BP oil spill at this point, you have not been watch­ing the news. I like Bowering’s writ­ing most when he is being funny and when he is angry. The January 4^th poem is a great exam­ple of an angry Bowering. Funny Bowering shines bright­est in his January 14^th poem about being lazy. But you’ll just have to buy the book to read that one.

The poems in this chap­ter moved between love and tol­er­ance, beauty and real­ity, all through the eyes of an aging poet. I couldn’t find where the narrator’s feel­ing of fool­ish­ness derived from. Maybe I am just naïve at this age, which only proves I will grow to be a fool. Even when Bowering’s nar­ra­tor speaks out to young poets, it doesn’t catch.

The January chap­ter was both play­ful and dark. It works as part of the book, but I wouldn’t buy this as an indi­vid­ual chap­book, but that’s because I still hate poetry about poetry.

You can fol­low along with Summer of Bowering by buy­ing My Darling Nellie Grey at Talon Books. If you have a review for this chap­ter, please post it in the com­ment section.

Reminder: Acorn-Plantos Award

Daniel Zomparelli

The Summer of Bowering

Daniel Zomparelli

Earlier this week, the lat­est book of poetry by George Bowering, My Darling Nellie Grey, arrived in the mail. When it landed on my fig­u­ra­tive desk, it made a large smack­ing noise. It’s been largely antic­i­pated, and its epic size is more than impres­sive for a poetry book. In 2006, George Bowering wrote a poem each day of the year, which would in turn cre­ate a chap­book for each month, which would in turn become his largest col­lec­tion of poetry — Fred Wah weighs in on the mechan­ics of it here. So to cel­e­brate his work, each week Geist.com will be review­ing a chap­ter of his book (12 in all) until the end of sum­mer. The reviews will start June 22^nd.

And we chal­lenge you to do the same. Purchase his lat­est book from Talon books and enjoy the sum­mer with Bowering. Let us know your thoughts and post your reviews.

A Large Stake

Jackpine Contest Entry

The Geist Jackpine Sonnet Contest is under­way and to make things inter­est­ing Geist is post­ing some of the sub­mis­sions for you to read and com­ment on. Each poem will be posted anony­mously (but with per­mis­sion from the authors) and com­ments on the poem will not be con­sid­ered in the judg­ing. Remember, contest closes July 1^st, so get writing! 

A Large Stake

Dear Snappy; I have tried to play for a large stake, and if I suc­ceed all will be well. If I don’t, I shall be happy to pop off in the midst of such an adven­ture. 

  —from Amelia Earhart’s will, excerpted in the New York Times, June 4 1928

Night, and the air smells of salt. The men asleep upstairs,

their bel­lies full of unend­ing mut­ton. Oh, the mutton.

I fear I shall begin to sprout hooves. You could lose

the houses amongst the pota­toes and inevitable cabbages,

Pole fences strain­ing against the slant­ing wind and its

calami­ties. In the quiet kitchen, yesterday’s bread and

a crock of but­ter. Violent pur­ple berries. Three hen’s eggs.

Who could turn stone into such plenty?

Twenty-nine years have con­spired to bring me here

to these chill before-dawn get­tings up.

My breath mate­ri­al­iz­ing in the fog as if I were

Shackleton march­ing slowly to his grave.

A sliver of June rises beyond the horizon.

I stand at the win­dow, singing to the horseman.