INTERVIEW of George Bowering by Donato Mancini

DM: You’ve published a hell of a lot of poetry over the years, in a wide range of modes. Is there a single volume or sequence that you consider your definitive work?

GB: I do not think that there is A definitive book, but I do think that there is a book or two by whose shape I would like to be judged or appreciated or remembered. The main ones might be Kerrisdale Elegies and Allophanes. They, like other texts I have worked on, are conceived as books, worked on over a period of time commensurate to the task. They both take up a problem or a baffle or a procedure and attend to it, so that the moment by moment line-making can be paid attention to, the gizmo having been decided. Obviously Kerrisdale Elegies has to keep up the pretense of translating the Duino Elegies, and Allophanes could be written only during a series of poetry classes given by Robin Blaser. I do occasionally write a lyric, but nearly all the poems I am still interested in are sequences and books.

DM: You once pointed out that literature is a spatial rather than temporal medium. “Spatial” in that a reader can move back and fourth through a book, re-reading, reading ahead, reading in any order or direction desired. That spatiality seems crucial to the way a book like Allophanes works, while lyrics can be painfully limiting in that sense.

GB: Well, what I said was that prose, fiction, say, is spatial, as
are sculpture and painting, while poetry is rather temporal, as is music. Now i suppose that once a long poem such as Allophanes is in book form, one can move around in it as a reader; but the main excitement (of the senses, mind) comes from the moving line by line. Allophanes also fights that process, as you see, with the abrupt departures. Lyrics, yes, are just about music, temporal.

DM: So what’s the main consideration that drew your attention
towards sequences and long poems?