Book Reviews
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Book Reviews The Half-Lives of Pat Lowther Explicating this crime as a so cietal Christine Wiesenthal and literary phenomenon is the man- date assumed by Christine Wiesenthal Toronto: Universit y of Toronto in The Half-Lives of Pat Lowther. The Press, 2005. 489 pp. $65.00 cloth. title and profile images of the poet on the cover are appropriate metaphors Linda Rogers for what is still a mystery. In fact there Victoria are several mysteries, all of which Wiesenthal attempts to bring out of the hirty years ago, my husband shadows and into the more impartial Tand I were having dinner at the light of hindsight. Da Tandoor restaurant in Victoria The first mystery is why her death with the incomplete executive of the affected so many. It was a catalyst. League of Canadian Poets. All eyes Lowther was a significant impetus for were on the door. Would Pat Lowther, the League of Poets’s Feminist Caucus, co-chair, be arriving late? My youngest which brought forward feminist issues, son slept fitfully in his Moses basket mainly as they pertained to women and, senseless, wedged between rocks writers who had been sidelined in the at Furry Creek near Squamish, the emerging literary business. Women missing guest never did arrive. Today writers had difficulty in finding pub- Pat Lowther is an icon for spousal lishers, in getting reviews, readings, abuse, the fussing infant is an adult, and academic positions. They had also and our world is very different. been regarded as “meat,” protein to feed We are all now aware that domestic the insatiable male artistic ego, which violence is ubiquitous and reprehensible. brings us to the second mystery. Crimes of passion are no longer an That mystery is: why did she fall for acceptable legal defence. Pat Lowther’s a pretentious felon like Roy Lowther in death at the hand of her deranged the first place? The answer is simple. husband was a catalyst for that changing To a woman with low self-esteem and consciousness in our country. She was febrile ambitions, Roy Lowther was a poet and her voice was stilled. That an apparent power figure in the tiny was and still is a tragedy. Vancouver literary pond of the 1960s. Pat bc studies, no. 151, Autumn 2006 97 98 bc studies was doing what women are biologically mythological power of writers like programmed to do. That she didn’t get Neruda, she wanted her own star in out of the marriage when her husband the firmament. To her inept hus band revealed his vanity and violence is also this was incomprehensible; and he statistically appropriate. Women don’t. destroyed what he could not understand. Instead of leaving the bully, she fell Wiesenthal doesn’t quite understand into the tender trap of a “same-time- either. She is an academic, and, in next-year” relationship with a poet this apparently intensely re searched of slightly higher profile in the years book (except for small but significant when League of Canadian Poets agms errors like her description of the provided romantic opportunities for courthouse, now the Vancouver Art fragile practitioners. Gallery, as being made of brick rather Wiesenthal chronicles Lowther’s than stone – the kind of error that attachment to flawed but apparently could cast doubt on the credibility of connected men and her struggle to her scholarship) she vacillates between travel in the wake of Pablo Neruda’s mysteries as Lowther did between her shooting star and Dorothy Livesay’s many functions as wife, mother, poet, listing mother ship. No one was going politician, and arts bureaucrat. What to help Pat Lowther. All she had were begins as biography and detective the words she squeezed out of her tor- story makes lateral moves into history mented life. and literary criticism; and we are still The third mystery is whether we unenlightened. There is no end to the would still be hearing of Pat Lowther story. The book ends abruptly, as did as a poet had her husband not bashed the subject. For Lowther, there is no her head in and left her broken and star. She is just a sad creature washed up bleeding on a beach where he had once on the beach, her bones now bleached made love to her. The sad poignancy and indistinguishable from all others. of her death has made Lowther a There are no marks on her and, because martyr for women who look, as she of her susceptibility to influences, her did, for a voice to lead them out of mark on our literature is still under the wilderness. Carol Shields, herself debate. a victim of prejudice against women Wiesenthal, encumbered by the bio- writers, unconsciously borrowed one grapher’s vulnerability, equivocates of Lowther’s titles for her own Stone in her judgments, but she does leave Diary. The annual Pat Lowther Award the dust balls alone. She may or may for the best book of poetry by a woman not have intuited that the Lowther asserts the validity of women’s writing. marriage was a metaphor for that Predictably, there are writers who argue oxymoron “the literary community.” that poetry evaluation should transcend Jealousy and competitiveness, the gender. Many fine writers, some of them enemies of true art, which should guide friends of Lowther’s, left the League us to enlightenment, are the microcosm of Poets because they were offended and macrocosm of Lowther’s half-lives. by the intrusion of gender politics in a I wish Wiesenthal had been able to craft organization. As she did in life, draw such conclusions, but she does at Lowther still stands in the crucible of least leave the evidence. It is all a matter conflict three decades hence. of housekeeping. Pat Lowther was anxious and Wiesenthal documents Lowther’s am bitious. Attaching herself to the notoriously unkempt domesticity and Book Reviews 99 the legendary story of the Maritime the universities of Victoria and British reading tour she made in her final Columbia, was then BC regional summer. The nervous poet’s bags director for cbc radio and had excellent had been lost, and, in her attempt publishing contacts. Carr, then acutely to recall and recite poems she had ill, was largely confined to bed, but packed in her mother’s suitcase, the her artistic impulses found expression real meaning of Wiesenthal’s book through recollections of her early life – comes clear. Pat Lowther attempted a continuing autobiography of “Small,” to navigate stars without a map. her pet name for herself. During this An ambivalent autodidact, she lived period she wrote Klee Wyck (1941), The vicariously, through books and men. Book of Small (1942), and The House of All Unlike those grounded peoples who Sorts (1944) and began writing sections learn the meaning of themselves, their of Growing Pains: The Autobiography of geography, and their culture from Emily Carr (1946), which was published songlines, she was distracted from the posthumously, as was Hundreds and West Coast environment she described Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr in her best poems. Hers was only a half- (1966). In effect, Carr rediscovered life, even while she was still living. (or recreated) herself and her past life Perhaps a fragmented record of her life in the process of writing her stories and work is an appropriate tribute. – stories that her correspondence with Dilworth, and Dilworth himself as editor, helped shape. Corresponding Influence: Linda M. Morra, who came across their correspondence while writing Selected Letters of Emily Carr her doctoral dissertation, is to be con- and Ira Dilworth gratulated for recognizing their literary Linda M. Morra, editor value and editing them. What an irascible, impossible, wonderful woman Toronto: Universit y of Toronto Emily Carr was. These letters show her Press, 2006. pp. 352. Illus. at her best – and worst. At her best, $60.00 cloth. she is wonderful. She stoically endures pain: “I stayed in bed all day after Xmas Sandra Djwa & most of yesterday – heart pains – I Vancouver let the girl have a good deal of time off & did too much” (81); she recognizes his wonderful collection of her own mortality without complaint Tletters describes a special friend ship and is always concerned for the welfare between Emily Carr and Ira Dilworth of the younger Dilworth, whom she between 1940 and 1945. Carr was already views fondly as a dear friend, mentor, recognized as a distinguished artist, and literary expert. At her worst, she but she had just begun to write prose, makes us quake, as for example when primarily because she was no longer she takes a pot-shot at her younger able to get into the forest to paint. male rivals when discussing some She was to become a forthright and drawings done by high school students spirited writer in the next few years, after reading Klee Wyck: “They were in large part through Dilworth’s indeniably Maxey [Maynard] and editorial support. Dilworth, a former Jacksie [Shadbolt] things[,] were all professor of English who had taught at show off[,] no observation[,] no Indian 100 bc studies feeling” (209). Nonetheless, it is Carr’s moment in its text. Flahiff extracts the wonderful honesty that is captivating. title proper from a specific entry in the “Everyone,” she tells Dilworth, “is writer’s mid-1950s “Paris diary,” which tremendously alone in this world when he has wisely included in his book: it comes right down to the core & there “Picasso had one of his caretakers jailed are so few cores that match – I often for destroying his doves … Today when marvel how everybody comes to be so I thought how hard it is for an artist different when they see & hear, smell to live at all my heart was filled with & eat the same things?” (89).