Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. George Bowering's 36th book of poetry, THE WORLD, I GUESS shows Canada's original poet-laureate still in MVP form as he approaches his 80th birthday. THE WORLD, I GUESS is a substantial book, six sections that demonstrate a command of a broad poetic range, a catholic range of interests, and echoes of a lifetime of reading and learning from Pound, Williams, Stanley, and others. The centrepiece of Bowering's new book is a long poem, The Flood, a complex, discursive poem whose subject is poesis and whose interest is in the world around the writer. But the book ends with a suite of translations of the modern Canadian poetry canon, from Charles G.D. Roberts and Archibald Lampman to Irving Layton and Phyllis Webb. While THE WORLD, I GUESS might be just Bowering's 36th book of poetry, he's also issued a dozen or two novels and short story collections and another couple of dozen books of stuff he didn't make up: criticism, memoirs, and histories.
