Publisher's Synopsis
Although his literary reputation rests primarily on his novels,Malcolm Lowry (1909-57) considered himself to be a poet, and hecomposed an extensive poetic canon. No reliable edition of Lowry'spoetry currently exists. Increasing critical interest in all aspects ofLowry's life and work prompted the preparation of this completeedition 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 toreflect his artistic development and are preceded by short essaysdescribing the specific issues raised by those poems. The openingsection -- Lowry's poetic juvenilia -- reflects his fascinationwith the sea, as does the ensuing section, The Lighthouse Invitesthe Storm, his first collection of poetry, a sequence of relatedsemi-autobiographical poems which depicts the adventures of thecharacters Peter Gaunt and Vigil Forget. Lowry composed most of TheLighthouse in Mexico; following it in this edition is a smallgroup of uncollected Mexican poems. The next two sections of text --'Dollarton 1940-54: Selected Poems 1947' and 'Dollarton1940-54: Uncollected Poems' -- reflect and record the experience ofLowry's sojourn on the lower mainland and its deep effect onhim.
All the poems are fully annotated. The appendices contain sectionsof song lyrics and undated fragments, as well as a remarkably coherentgroup of love poems written between 1949 and Lowry's death in1957.
This edition provides Lowryans with ready access to the latestdeterminable authorial versions of, and the textual histories for, thecanon's 490 poems, which range in date from 1925 to 1957. By usingthis edition, readers will be able to reconstruct every version ofevery Lowry poem.
