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.

The Technological Poet and An Upcoming Reading

Daniel Zomparelli

In case you are out of the loop, a read­ing by Ray Hsu, Marguerite Pigeon, Mary Cornish, Camille T. Dungy and David Zieroth is hap­pen­ing this tues­day as part of the Cross-Border Pollination read­ing series started by Rachel Rose. Poetry Is Dead recently caught up with the two men­tioned poets. You can read all about tech­nol­ogy and the future of poetry in the inter­view with Ray Hsu. And Marguerite Pigeon dis­cusses her new book Inventory.

Make sure to check out the read­ing hap­pen­ing this tues­day at the W2 Storyeum, in Vancouver. For more infor­ma­tion about the read­ing and the read­ers, visit the Facebook page.

What Do Lady Gaga, Batman and the Jackpine Sonnet Have In Common? Not Much.

Daniel Zomparelli

In fur­ther attempts to under­stand the jack­pine son­net and to help those who have still yet to enter the con­test, I have writ­ten some exam­ples of my own. These were the poems read at the launch party of issue 76 and cel­e­bra­tion of 20 years of Geist. The son­nets do not expand as much as some jack­pine son­nets can grow. I started by writ­ing a son­net, then allow­ing the sound of the poem to expand lines to allow for musi­cal­ity to flow through, or in other cir­cum­stances, to let the punch line hit a lit­tle stronger. These are just a cou­ple of exam­ples of how to approach the jack­pine. There are end­less ways to cre­ate your own jack­pine son­net, but I don’t rec­om­mend writ­ing about Lady Gaga or Batman. Remember, dead­line is July 1^st, 2010, so get working.

Utility Pack

He spent months find­ing the right fab­ric. Dark, 

shim­mery satin cloak, a smart belt to match. 

Latex caused too many bleed­ing nipples, 

like marathons with­out Band-aids. He tried silk

but sweat­ing made the fab­ric hang low like

loose skin. He tried black leg­gings since

they were all the rage, but when he ran

the leg­gings would rise to reveal hairy

knees. He switched to lycra span­dex so

that when he ran, the fab­ric would move

with his skin and when he slinked into

the Batmobile, his span­dex stretched and would

stick slick against the curve of his back 

to let Robin linger at his util­ity pack.

How To Get More Hits To Your Blog

Write Ra ra ah, Lady Gaga. Take a 

posi­tion on Gaza, Isreal, and

Palestine, gay mar­riage, Sandra Bullock’s

Oscar Dress, John and Kate’s mess, whose been can’d

for sleep­ing with their assis­tant, Heather Locklear’s

fears, guys from cheers who have got­ten fat. Free 

sex chat, lol­catz, celebrity spat. Queer

out­ings, they’re just face­book like me.

Blog about Tiger Wood’s sex scan­dal, claim

to be a part of Tiger Wood’s sex scandal.

Make graphs about the ‘80s, sin­gle ladies,

youtube side boob, free nudes, dudes balls and all.

Above all else, include pics of titties

and kit­ties, prefer­ably in close proximity.

The Escape

Jackpine Contest Entry

The Geist Jackpine Sonnet Contest is 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!

The Escape

He knew the moment he saw her that his life 

Was bro­ken, wrecked, dis­in­te­grated, and not

That he even wanted — now — a girl, a wife,

Inamorata, nymph, or any­thing, but what he got

In one cales­cent glance would shred and fuel

His frag­ile qui­etude into a cartography

Of stalled pur­suits and spi­rals, a fran­tic duel

With his imag­i­na­tion and her even­tual cruelty.

He could turn and go. He could get on his bike

And spin around the cor­ner, pedal, disappear

Before she fully saw that she could strike

A shat­ter­ing wound on the appar­ently austere

Composure of his face. Too late. She knew

And smiled a lit­tle, swing­ing just a step

Toward him; then, as he fully under­stood just who

She was, and what she’d do to him, he schlepped

His bike into oncom­ing traf­fic, and was gone.

The Cruelty of Curiosity

Jackpine Contest Entry

The Geist Jackpine Sonnet Contest is 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!

 The Cruelty of Curiosity