White Stone: The Alice Poems
by Stephanie Bolster
Signal Editions / Vehicule Press, 1998
Review by Geoffrey Cook
Stephanie Bolster is an obviously talented young poet, and the reception
of White Stone has rightly acknowledged her importance. Much has
been written about the book, so this review takes a more abstract approach:
less a book review than a comment on Canadian poetic sensibility. The
tone and perspective in this review should not, however, be misunderstood
- I do not doubt the legitimacy of either the poet's talent or success: Two Bowls of Milk, Bolster's second collection, proves we have
a significant and diligent new poet in the country. White Stone
was obviously a very self-conscious literary project : the acknowledgments
suggest the manuscript passed through writing workshops (Banff), graduate
degrees (UBC), journals (17), prizes (2), publication and the Governor
General's Award (and for a first book!).
The literary community has been behind the poetry for some time; once
the book appeared, it seemed that the momentum of support could not be
stopped. I am not suggesting that the GG judges were naively wowed or
that they compromised standards, nor, again, that there is a disingenuousness
about the manuscript. Rather, there are several reasons that the book
is popular, critically lauded, and important, reasons that the Canadian
literary (poetry) community and reading public have acclaimed White
Stone. Bolster deals with universal yet peculiarly contemporary anxieties
through the exploration of a particularly rich narrative (or 'image-reservoir')
using techniques that are typical in Canadian poetry.
One of the most common, almost 'traditional', poetic vehicles in Canadian
poetry is the sequence of poems "in-persona", which balance narrative,
lyric, and dramatic modes. Some other examples of this sub-genre of poetry
are: Margaret Atwood's The Journals of Susanna Moodie, Gwendolyn
MacEwen's T.E. Lawrence Poems, and Lorna Crozier's recent collection
in the voice of a female character in a novel, As For Me and My House,
by Sinclair Ross. There are male poets who also use the device, though
it is more common among female poets, arguably because there has been
a period of greater exploration and anxiety in the establishment of a
female voice in Canadian poetry and in contemporary literature generally.
That is, if the legitimacy of a voice is in question (publicly and privately),
many potential voices are explored. I am not suggesting that female poets
(or writers) do not have a commanding voice in literature: obviously they
do. Yet it is also self-evident that the question of female voice has
been crucial in the last 100 years of cultural development. And it may
be true that authentic voice is a result of such periods of anxiety -
both cultural and personal -, and that traditions are founded on anxieties.
Bolster's collection, then, is in a tradition of Canadian poetry.
How it was originally conceived and set upon is a biographer's question;
but, though it may not have begun with a single image, certainly the title-image
HAD to manifest itself at some point in the sequence. The following is
from the title poem of the collection (the "it" is the white stone which,
following a social convention, Charles Dodgson used to mark his journal
the day he met Alice Liddell; a white stone "bookmark" in a journal symbolized
a lucky day):
... We seek
to measure it according
to our own
desire, test its substance,
hold it
to the light to see
what lives inside.
It is a shining shape
receding as we near it.
This stone is a metaphor for the whole enterprise of The Alice
Poems and, indeed, the work of art generally. (I could not help often
recalling Osip Mandelstam's first collection of poetry, Stone,
not just because of the analogous titles, but because the Russian's book
was so thematically coherent and such a touchstone for his development
- as, I suspect Bolster's first book will prove.) The lines quoted above
suggest the image's centrality to the sequence; they also note how such
key images are a vortex of energy and reference, provoking - or locating
- an overlapping of themes; an example of what is now called the 'intertextuality'
of the poetry.
From the most abstract perspective, White Stone is concerned
with how life is mythologized - concerned with both the aim of art and
its dubious moral effect. Alice Liddell (AKA Alice in Wonderland) and
her relationship with Charles Dodgson (AKA Lewis Carroll) is a perfect
case study not only of this fundamental issue (i.e. of art's (and artist's)
moral responsibility and irresponsibility), but of woman as Muse, of feminism,
etc.: the popular, timely social anxieties I spoke of earlier. The opening
poem of White Stone describes the poet-voyeur watching Alice watch
the famous "Beggar Girl" photo of herself (by Dodgson) come into being
in the photographic chemical tray. Bolster, that is, does not duck the
implications of her study: while Dodgson's motives are suspect in some
poems, there are equally sympathetic portraits of this artist; there are
pure love poems, and there is a consistent self-consciousness which allows
Bolster to mythologize herself (in identifying with Alice) and to de-mythologize
herself: as suspect as Dodgson, and as Julia Margaret Cameron (who photographed
Alice 'as' Greek goddesses). In "Thames", we get a glimpse of the tension
in these multiple perspectives:
And me: where do I
fit?...
... I am her eyes
that shy from his
and look again when
he can't see; ...
... I am his need
to make a story good
enough to hold her
like no photograph,
his hope that her foot will stay close
and his knowledge
that it won't; her fear that he'll
stop the tale now
or that it will not end...
The narrative of Alice (as person, woman, model, Muse, as "Alice in
Wonderland") allows Bolster to exploit a host of images, scenes and ironies,
and the collection divides into variety of 'takes': thus the division
of the book into 4 sections, and thus the inevitable explosion-implosion,
since the logic of any idea, emotion and image demands not just unassailable
autonomy but absoluteness:
Of the advantages
to death and myth,
this you have most
deserved: space
enough to open out
and be the only thing.
from "Portrait of
Alice as Her Own Universe"
White Stone is a very rich first book, one that Stephanie Bolster
could milk for some time - I mean this positively: the book's significance
is partly that it focuses so clearly, almost obsessively on fundamental
aesthetic-ethical issues.
The "almost obsessive" remark is relevant: a reader does at times
wonder if the poet will get out from under her Muse, turn from the books
and ideas to the rawness of the world, filter less through the Alice-lens,
speak more directly, familiarly, lyrically. There remains a whiff of the
academia in "White Stone" (check the "Sources" page). But "The Alice
Poems",
as accomplished as they are, are apprenticeship poems - in literary art
and interpretation. Two Bowls of Milk, Bolster's recently published
second book, shows the logical next step in the development of a poet:
many of the (excellent) poems are based on pictures in the National Gallery
(again, I am reminded of Rilke's "New Poems", so many of which were "about"
works of art).
This move to poems about paintings is a maturing of the personal voice
since there is slightly less distance between the eye and the world, the
work less studied and anxious (eschewing footnotes, for example): instead
of the librarian's cool hands, in Two Bowls of Milk, the poet's
fingernails have some dirt (or at least paint) under them, and the poems
are more human for the dirt. Despite the Governor General's Award, then
(and the very fine "Alice Poems"), what is ultimately important about
Stephanie Bolster's White Stone is what the book promises: with
her first step, Bolster has arrived at a plateau in Canadian poetry; and
her second starts stretching for the next mountain - drawing poetry in
this country with her.
Geoffrey
Cook's poetry has been published in "Pottersfield Portfolio", "The Nashwaak
Review", and "Descant (#104)". This fall some of his poems will appear
in "Matrix" and "The Gaspereau Review". Geoff has received a Toronto Arts
Council Award and a grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du
Quebec for his poetry. He has also published numerous essays over the
years in "Pottersfield Portfolio", "The Fiddlehead", "Books in Canada",
and "Comparative Literature in Canada". Originally from Nova Scotia, Geoff
currently teaches English at John Abbott College outside Montreal, where
he lives. He is seeking a publisher for his collection of poetry, "Postscript".
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