Review
In the past two or three decades, various scholars and critics have referred to Malcolm Lowry's own high estimation of himself as a poet and his life-long commitment to writing poetry, but they have had no opportunity to actually examine the incredible scope - the range and variety - of Lowry's achievement as a poet. Kathleen Scherf here provides a masterly scholarly presentation of the poems -- in an edition which surveys all known drafts of Lowry's nearly 500 poems, from Lowry's work in the Leys in the mid-1920s, to his 1950s love poems in Canada and England ... Scholars around the word will welcome publication of Scherf's authoritative text of Lowry's poems. - Paul Tiessen, Wilfrid Laurier University This is a handsome volume, meticulously edited and documented, with an introduction to each section, and copious notes (which his earlier poetry certainly needs!). - Terence Wright, Durham University Journal Kathleen Scherf is to be applauded for making a major contribution to Lowry's oeuvre and our knowledge. This volume is a gift of literary scholarship for which we should be grateful, a collection to be savoured and consulted again and again. - Sherrill Grace, BC Studies
Product Description
Although his literary reputation rests primarily on his novels, Malcolm Lowry (1909-57) considered himself to be a poet, and he composed an extensive poetic canon. No reliable edition of Lowry's poetry currently exists. Increasing critical interest in all aspects of Lowry's life and work prompted the preparation of this complete edition of his poetry, in which the poems are located, identified, dated, arranged, collated, annotated, and explicated by biographical, critical, and textual introductions. The sections of Lowry's text are chronologically arranged to reflect his artistic development and are preceded by short essays describing the specific issues raised by those poems. The opening section -- Lowry's poetic juvenilia -- reflects his fascination with the sea, as does the ensuing section, The Lighthouse Invites the Storm, his first collection of poetry, a sequence of related semi-autobiographical poems which depicts the adventures of the characters Peter Gaunt and Vigil Forget. Lowry composed most of The Lighthouse in Mexico; following it in this edition is a small group of uncollected Mexican poems. The next two sections of text -- 'Dollarton 1940-54: Selected Poems 1947' and 'Dollarton 1940-54: Uncollected Poems' -- reflect and record the experience of Lowry's sojourn on the lower mainland and its deep effect on him. All the poems are fully annotated. The appendices contain sections of song lyrics and undated fragments, as well as a remarkably coherent group of love poems written between 1949 and Lowry's death in 1957. This edition provides Lowryans with ready access to the latest determinable authorial versions of, and the textual histories for, the canon's 490 poems, which range in date from 1925 to 1957. By using this edition, readers will be able to reconstruct every version of every Lowry poem.
