Volume 43, Number 3 · February 15, 1996
Notions of Freedom
By Brad Leithauser
The Collected Poetry of Malcolm Lowry
edited by Kathleen Scherf
University of British Columbia Press, 418 pp., $60.00
Pursued by Furies: A Life of Malcolm Lowry
by Gordon Bowker
St. Martin's Press, 672 pp., $29.95
He liked to describe himself as primarily a poet, which is hardly the way the rest of the world has come to see Malcolm Lowry. I've more than once, in conversation, mentioned my devotion to Lowry's poetry and had a misunderstanding arise. It was assumed I was speaking metaphorically—that I was praising the lyrical qualities of his prose. But while the fiction, particularly Under the Volcano, has its appeal, as do the letters and some aspects of his hermetic and hellbent life, it's Lowry's poems that pull on my imagination. Having moved nine times in fourteen years, I can't say there are many books that have followed me everywhere, but The Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry—an old City Lights paperback carrying a list price of $1.50—is one. Admittedly, this is partly a matter of weight and size; it's a waif of a book, a pocket-book for a human-sized pocket.
Review, 3947 words
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