New Star Blogs

Review of reviews :: George Bowering

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Bringing you another New Star review of reviews – this time shining the spotlight on George Bowering and his two most recent books.

Karl Siegler has recently reviewed Bowering’s Could Be over at the Ormsby Review. “[W]e find in his “It Would Never Have Been a Sonnet” a perfect illustration of the dictum ‘form is never more than an extension of content.’” writes Siegler, “Of course not: the poem’s octave is missing a line. George notices such things, even though “poets have no business / looking for order.””

Of this same collection rob mclennan writes “there is an elegance to these poems, even through working a number of his familiar touchstones…These are poems of attention, looking simultaneously, it would seem, in every direction”

And on Soft Zipper, Bowering’s earlier 2021 offering, mclennan says the “structural echo from Gertrude Stein” Bowering has employed in writing the book is “a curious way to produce a memoir, and an intriguing way to prompt memory, allowing that narrative leap from a word or a phrase to spark where that section might go.”

Over at the Literary Review of Canada, Rose Hendrie writes that “like the best memoirs, Soft Zipper offers a slice of a mind. And like the best, Bowering does not fall under the spell of his own mythology.”

“[T]hese essays put me in mind of E.B. White, with their whimsical insights and tales of growing old.” says Sheldon Goldfarb, back at the Ormsby Review, “these essays aren’t obscure at all. They are playful, wistful, nostalgic, and profound.”

Both of George’s latest books are available online and in your local bookstore – check out this post to find out where to find Could Be and this one for Soft Zipper! You can also catch readings from George by watching the recording of our online book launch.