He Speaks Volumes: A Biography of George Bowering by Rebecca Wigod

Reviewed by: He Speaks Volumes: A Biography of George Bowering by Rebecca Wigod Miriam Nichols Rebecca Wigod, He Speaks Volumes: A Biography of George Bowering. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2018. 336 pp. Paper, $24.95. As a former student of George Bowering's at Simon Fraser University and an interviewee for Rebecca Wigod's He Speaks Volumes: A Biography of George Bowering, I am delighted to welcome [End Page 210] a book that takes us through the life and times of this important writer. Bowering was born in 1935 in Penticton and grew up in Oliver, both small towns in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. A "firecracker of a little boy" (17), he discovered early on a passion for writing and baseball that has lasted a lifetime. Bowering honed his writing skills at the University of British Columbia in the late 1950s and early 1960s, where he became a contributing editor of TISH, a student-run literary journal known for its cheek and for drawing inspiration from the New American Poets, notably Robert Duncan. Over his writing life and teaching career at Simon Fraser University, Bowering has written, edited, or coedited over a hundred books of poetry, fiction, criticism, drama, memoir, and history. Wigod's introductory chapter is called "Mr. Prolific." With such a subject the biographer's ever-present dilemma of selection looms particularly large: how to corral a writer of such range in a mere 300 pages? Wigod opts for short, thematic chapters that go for representative descriptions and anecdotes: "The Boy," "The Youth," "The Diarist," "The Varsity Man," "The TISH Man," "The Husband," "The Professor," "The Poet," and so on. This many-threaded story gives us a Bowering who is part trickster and postmodern parodist, part historian, and part high lyricist. The last of these roles notably appears in a chapter titled "The Success," where Wigod draws attention to Bowering's stunning Kerrisdale Elegies (1984; reissued 2008). This book-length poem pushes off from Rainier Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and illustrates Bowering's remarkable capacity for achieving depth of feeling and intellect in casual language. There's a word for this style, Wigod writes: tapinosis is "a rhetorical device with which serious things are said in offhand, slangy language" (198), a device Bowering uses admirably. Another important feature of Bowering's practice, particularly evident in the novels and histories, is his tango with Canadian nationalism. Wigod records the outrage among nationalist literati that accompanied both of Bowering's Governor General Award wins, for Rocky Mountain Foot (1969) and Burning Water (1980). At midcentury many Canadian writers and academics were intent on establishing a canon distinct from the American, and some took Bowering's interest in William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, [End Page 211] Charles Olson, Jack Spicer, and Alan Ginsberg as an affront to this effort. Ironically, decades after that battle few writers can claim more Canadian content than Bowering. In addition to A Short Sad Book (1977), a hilarious send-up of the Canadian quest for identity, Bowering has a trilogy of historical novels set in British Columbia and three histories that show the breadth of his grasp of Canadian history and the depth of his commitment to a writerly telling of it: Bowering's B.C.: A Swashbuckling History (1996); Egotists and Autocrats: The Prime Ministers of Canada (1999, 2000); and Stone Country: An Unauthorized History of Canada (2003). The history books, Wigod says, combine "a mastery of facts paired with jaunty narration, authorial intrusion, literary references, and punchy chapter titles" (228–29). In 2002 Bowering was named Canada's first poet laureate. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada that year and received the Order of British Columbia in 2004. Any biography is subject to the reproach of omission; mine of this genre is that I would have liked to have seen a more emphatic statement of Bowering's artistry and his significance to the many literary communities in which he has participated. Wigod's tale is aimed at a general readership, and this means she has had to trade in-depth commentary on Bowering's writing for accessibility. Nonetheless, this book is an engaging read and a useful resource, with...

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