15th Canadian Challenge - 11th Review - Could Be

I read George Bowering's newest poetry collection, Could Be, while it was hot of the press, and in fact I pre-ordered it, which is fairly unusual (for me), but I didn't want to wait for the library to get it in stock, though it is there now.  (The review itself has been significantly delayed as I got my thoughts together.)

The cover is a detail from Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. You can just see Icarus splash down in the right-hand margin of the cover (if you know what you are looking for).  The painting is of course the inspiration for Auden's poem "Musée des Beaux Arts," as well as a W.C. Williams' poem on the same theme.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, ca. 1560

Bowering's take is embedded in "Bruegel's Idiots," which is one of the first poems in the collection.  In common with Auden and Williams, Bowering focuses on the inattention on display: "They all could have taken a tip / from any father who said pay attention..."  Bowering goes a bit further than the others in saying all the characters are a bit dim.  "[O]ne guy lets his sheep / walk on stone all the way down to the water / where there's nothing to graze."

Could Be in divided into five sections.  The first section, which contains "Bruegel's Idiots," are mostly casual, free-verse poems.  Many of them focus on growing old and Bowering's dread of death.  In "Running with Luck," he writes "when I wake / I begin to learn what parts of my mortal body / will go on hurting this day."  This is immediately followed by "Straws": "Every time I read a book it reminds me / that I'm going to die." 

The poems in the second section are quite short with short lines.  Here is "The Stars" in its entirety: "The stars / fell  from the sky // like similies /on a sheet of paper."  These mostly strike me as quick journal entries, though Bowering may have been going for trying to emulate Robert Creeley. 

The poems in the third section are quite similar to those in the first section, so I am not quite sure why they weren't just combined.

In the fourth section, Bowering is writing poems about poetry and he writing life.  He name checks Frank O'Hara.  Then the first two poems in this section explore rhythm.  "George & Kevin" is based around a bad pun on serial poetry,* and then a follow-up poem "All True Alphabet" is a sort of serial poem with one line focused on a place name for each letter of the alphabet.  In "When I Was," he jokingly explores his "origin story" as a poet: "When I was a kid big guys / were always beating me up / so ... / I mailed a form to a poetry academy / and learned scansion and so on, /... / and my life has been a lot better ever since."  While it supposed to be a funny riff on Charles Atlas and his ads, I felt that Bowering, if pressed, would say that pursuing poetry had been a fulfilling career. 

The fifth and final section is a long, journal-like poem "Sitting in Jalisco," which records a 2016 trip to Mexico.  It reminds me of George Stanley's work, and indeed Bowering name checks Stanley at one point.  I didn't think this was entirely successful, but that is mostly because I have a very strong preference for poems that stay within a 1-3 page limit.

Aside from the fairly dark turn of the first section, where the spectre of death hovers over most of the poems, these are generally casual poems.  Many are supposed to be funny and most are short.  It doesn't feel like Bowering is making some major statement with this book, and he might even argue that, given his short time left on Earth, he didn't want to undertake a specific writing challenge like he did in My Darling Nellie Grey.  Could Be is definitely not the best place to start with Bowering, and this post provides some guidance, useful or not, on Bowering's career.  The most "important" Bowering is Kerrisdale Elegies, though my personal favourite books are Delayed Mercy and Vermeer's Light.  Could Be is a slight book in comparison to those earlier works, but anyone who is a fan of Bowering will want to check out this late-career entry.

* Bowering has written a lot of serial poems over his career, and this generous volume, Taking Measures, collects all the "important" ones.