Good Morning Poems By George Bowering

George Bowering’s book Good Morning Poems delights, inspires, and educates the reader who not only enjoys reading poetry but also wants to learn more about its form and what makes a poem outstanding. The poems of the English-language poets Bowering has selected for comment cover five hundred years, beginning with They Flee from Me by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and ending with The Hid, Here by Margaret Avison.

“Bowering, through his commentary, shows the brilliance in each poem which makes it worthy of publishing.”

Though I’ve written poetry, published a few, and attended poetry workshops, I felt I was wading into foreign territory, but one I wanted to visit again and again. Bowering, through his commentary, shows the brilliance in each poem which makes it worthy of publishing. He explains why the poem has left such an indelible impression and why he read it again and again.

Bowering’s enthusiasm and expert knowledge of the poets and poems appearing in this lovely book of poetry literally gushes from the page. His passion for poetry is infectious. Bowering challenges the reader to look deep during the reading of a poem and find what is not obvious from the start. He encourages the poetry lover to read each poem aloud to hear the music and see the images the poet has created with his words, and to read it more than once. For example, when he discusses The Pact by Ezra Pound, he says, “There are still some people who might tell you that this little poem ‘doesn’t rhyme.’ These people, you could say, have their ears turned off.” Then he illustrates the rime he sees in the sentence structure. When I followed his suggestions on reading the poem, I saw and understood far more than I had at first sight.

Bowering, though an award-winning poet himself, is careful not to intimidate the novice reader of poetry. He reminds them he has studied some poems for over a few years to understand the poet’s intent.

This book of forty-eight poems, including those of very familiar poets—such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Alexander Pope, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Sheely, John Keats, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, and Robert Frost—is sure to become a keepsake. With its variety in form, subject, and language, Good Morning Poems is bound to give readers many mornings of pleasure.

George Bowering approaches literature as he does life: with a playful gravity and a grave merriness that makes intellectual life and writing seem at once attractive, unintimidating and remarkable. He dispels the myth of literature being hard or tricky, and demonstrates, as he reads and chats, the accessible and enriching nature of great literature. He and his wife Jean live in Vancouver.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ NeWest Press (April 1 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 118 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1774390655
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1774390658

Diana Stevan

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Diana Stevan likes to joke she’s a Jill of all trades as she’s worked as a family therapist, teacher, librarian, model, actress and sports reporter for CBC television. She’s the author of five novels and a novelette.

Her novels cross genres: A Cry from the Deep, a romantic mystery/adventure; The Rubber Fence, women’s fiction; and Lukia’s Family Saga series, historical/biographical fiction. Based on her Ukrainian grandmother's family’s life in Russia and in Canada, the series is a trilogy covering the years 1915-1943: Sunflowers Under Fire, Lilacs in the Dust Bowl, and Paper Roses on Stony Mountain.

When Diana isn’t writing, she loves to garden, travel, and read. With their two daughters grown, she lives with her husband Robert on Vancouver Island and West Vancouver, British Columbia.