Customer Reviews

Vermeer's Light: Poems 1996-2006

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As Canada's first Poet Laureate, George Bowering's collection of poetry is, as one might expect, exceptional. Vermeer's Light is a wonderful collection that every aspiring poet would be obliged to get. While, including some wonderfully wordy poems such as Word on Water? Ask a Stupid Question, Lost in the Library, and Ellen Field's Analphabet book for Wilbur Snowshoe, nothing in this collection is over long. It is a fine tuned body, where every word has weight.

The shorter poems are crisp and intriguing studies. While some of them are dark and edgy such as the Sitting in Vancouver poems, Three Political Falltime Haiku, and ASQ others pay wonderful homage. I love the Williams Carlos Williams rewrites:

Metro Spring

The apparition

of these white chickens

in the crowd, petals

on a wet red wheelbarrow

And (my favorite):

Pictures from Bill

According to Williams

when Icarus fell

it was no big deal.

Being a librarian I am naturally drawn to Bowering's Lost in the Library. It has a witty craft and a lovely "rime." This poem makes me doubt George Bowering's staying power as "infinitesimal." I love best the second section:

2.

I'm a wreck

in the bibliotheque.

I've got time

I've got rime,

I've got a really dirty neck.

I can't write my way

out of a wet paper Dewey decimal.

Right now my skill

and most of my will

are infinitesimal.

The last quarter of this book is what makes it a must have for any student of poetry. Rewriting My Grandfather shares poetry as process. It is incredibly insightful, dispelling the myths of writing. It also makes a brief tourist stop out of the work that goes into making a poem poetry. George Bowering's art is a monument well worth the stop and revisit.