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The Half-Lives of Pat Lowther (UTP $65)
Vancouver-born Pat Lowther was bludgeoned to death at the age of forty by her husband just as she was coming into her full strength as a poet. The violence of her death and the weeks of suspense between her disappearance and the discovery of her body brought her a measure of fame and critical attention disproportionate to her relatively small output. In the immediate aftermath of her death in 1975, Peter Gzowski orchestrated a tribute on FM radio, and there was an outpouring of elegies by her fellow poets. In the thirty years since then, an annual prize in Lowther's name has been awarded by the League of Canadian Poets to a female poet; there has been a documentary film, Watermarks; a selection of her published and previously unpublished work, Time Capsule (1997); a novelistic biography Furry Creek (1999) by Keith Harrison; a traditional biography, Pat Lowther's Continent: Her Life and Work (2000) by Toby Brooks; and other biographies and a memoir are reportedly in the works.
The Half-Lives of Pat Lowther (UTP $65) by University of Alberta English professor Christine Wiesenthal is part scholarly analysis and part biography and the most comprehensive study so far. The title (half-life is a scientific term denoting the transformation of elemental energy into something smaller than its original luminous molecular whole) indicates Wiesenthal's purpose in re-examining the history of Lowther's posthumous legacies. She explores the social and political forces that shaped Lowther's career, contributed to her death, and that still complicate the evaluation of her work. In recent years the practice of biography has been extended from the simple writing of "A Life"; to a new form or sub-genre that merges literary, historical and cultural analysis. If every genre demands its own set of canonical texts, Lowther's story with its literary, political, and legal ramifications yields excellent material for this method.
In an early chapter, Wiesenthal provides a sophisticated reading of Roy Lowther's trial, an event so marked by sensation that it has entered local legal history. The crown prosecutor, in an incredible gesture, introduced Lowther's skull and the hammer that smashed it as evidence. He mesmerized the jury during the defense counsel's arguments by handing both objects, actually fitting the hammer into the hollows in the skull. The trial, described in the Vancouver Sun under the headline 'Verses and Verdicts,' was also noteworthy for the extent that literature crept into the proceedings. The jury was initiated into the world of small literary magazines; Lowther's poems, and poems that her long distance lover, Eugene McNamara, wrote to and about her, were introduced as evidence. He was a married professor at the University of Windsor and they had met at conferences. She was reckless about leaving his letters around and perhaps this was deliberate taunting, although she didn't have much privacy. The judge invoked the standards of the so-called New Critics in his instructions to the jury about the interpretation of the poems; and Roy Lowther used the proceedings as a platform for his own poetic theories, including an indictment of what he saw as "an intellectual kind of poetry.";
In a year during which Canadians have been over-exposed by the media to accounts of celebrity murderers, Wiesenthal's reading of the Roy Lowther case is both highly relevant and exemplary. Notwithstanding the fact that Roy Lowther was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic before the marriage, and that his jealousy was personal in nature, Wiesenthal sees more in the murder than the momentary outburst of an individual madman. She demonstrates clearly that his private, domestic fury was fanned and shaped by broader culture wars and class tensions.
As an unappreciated poet, writing unfashionable "amateur"; poetry, Roy Lowther was enraged not only by his wife's success but by the kind of poetry she was writing and by her entry into the literary establishment-an entry marked by a widening circle of friends among influential editors and poets; a Canada Council grant; membership on a newly-appointed B.C. Interim Arts Board; a teaching job at UBC (a temporary sessional position with a $4,500 stipend) and her election as co-chair of the Canadian League of Poets. The acquisition of a brief-case became in his eyes the hated symbol of her growing professionalism. He confessed that after he disposed of the body, he flung the briefcase as far as he could into the bushes. It is a sad irony that the brief-case seems to have been the one private repository of her working papers for a writer who had no office, room or desk of her own.
The tendency of every prominent artist after death to become a contested site is amply illustrated by the acrimonious exchanges that followed the Gzowski radio tribute. Here, too, the insider-outsider theme ran through the rancorous charges, often in a way diametrically opposed to Roy Lowther's assessment. Her one-time friend, Milton Acorn, characterized Lowther as an exile, marginalized by the Toronto-centric literary elite. Similar disagreements continue to emerge over the evaluation of Lowther's talent, and Wiesenthal examines them under the heading "Canonicity and the 'Cult of the Victim.'"; One critic sees the violent death as an event that raised a poet of mediocre talent to a place among the "saints in CanLit heaven."; Another uses the death to read the poetry as prescient, and the poet as a prophet of her own doom. Others urge resistance to allowing the death to become a factor in the complicated process of judging the poetry. Wiesenthal sensibly argues for a distinction between the elevation of the woman to iconic status, and canonization of the literary artist.
The scholarly analyses in the first section of the book give way in later sections to more traditional biographical narratives. Wiesenthal tracks Lowther's working class ancestry and background, her decision to quit school at sixteen, her first marriage two years later, the birth of her first child at nineteen, divorce, custody battles, political activism, a second marriage, more children, and the disastrous deterioration of the marriage. Throughout all this, the one constant was Lowther's persistence in learning her craft, growing as an artist, and publishing her work.
Wiesenthal ends her study on a note that highlights the poignancy of Lowther's death. She describes Lowther on her fortieth birthday. She had returned to Vancouver after a successful reading tour on Prince Edward Island, packed up her children and was enjoying a family holiday on Mayne Island. She celebrated her birthday there on July 29th. "With her forties stretching before her,"; Wiesenthal notes, "she was beginning again, as she'd once told Dorothy Livesay, to see openings for herself."; A Stone Diary, the book she had just submitted to Oxford University Press was accepted on September 9th. She died two weeks later. Roy Lowther died in 1985 in prison. 080203635X
--by Joan Givner
[BCBW 2005] "Poetry"
The Half-Lives of Pat Lowther (UTP $65) by University of Alberta English professor Christine Wiesenthal is part scholarly analysis and part biography and the most comprehensive study so far. The title (half-life is a scientific term denoting the transformation of elemental energy into something smaller than its original luminous molecular whole) indicates Wiesenthal's purpose in re-examining the history of Lowther's posthumous legacies. She explores the social and political forces that shaped Lowther's career, contributed to her death, and that still complicate the evaluation of her work. In recent years the practice of biography has been extended from the simple writing of "A Life"; to a new form or sub-genre that merges literary, historical and cultural analysis. If every genre demands its own set of canonical texts, Lowther's story with its literary, political, and legal ramifications yields excellent material for this method.
In an early chapter, Wiesenthal provides a sophisticated reading of Roy Lowther's trial, an event so marked by sensation that it has entered local legal history. The crown prosecutor, in an incredible gesture, introduced Lowther's skull and the hammer that smashed it as evidence. He mesmerized the jury during the defense counsel's arguments by handing both objects, actually fitting the hammer into the hollows in the skull. The trial, described in the Vancouver Sun under the headline 'Verses and Verdicts,' was also noteworthy for the extent that literature crept into the proceedings. The jury was initiated into the world of small literary magazines; Lowther's poems, and poems that her long distance lover, Eugene McNamara, wrote to and about her, were introduced as evidence. He was a married professor at the University of Windsor and they had met at conferences. She was reckless about leaving his letters around and perhaps this was deliberate taunting, although she didn't have much privacy. The judge invoked the standards of the so-called New Critics in his instructions to the jury about the interpretation of the poems; and Roy Lowther used the proceedings as a platform for his own poetic theories, including an indictment of what he saw as "an intellectual kind of poetry.";
In a year during which Canadians have been over-exposed by the media to accounts of celebrity murderers, Wiesenthal's reading of the Roy Lowther case is both highly relevant and exemplary. Notwithstanding the fact that Roy Lowther was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic before the marriage, and that his jealousy was personal in nature, Wiesenthal sees more in the murder than the momentary outburst of an individual madman. She demonstrates clearly that his private, domestic fury was fanned and shaped by broader culture wars and class tensions.
As an unappreciated poet, writing unfashionable "amateur"; poetry, Roy Lowther was enraged not only by his wife's success but by the kind of poetry she was writing and by her entry into the literary establishment-an entry marked by a widening circle of friends among influential editors and poets; a Canada Council grant; membership on a newly-appointed B.C. Interim Arts Board; a teaching job at UBC (a temporary sessional position with a $4,500 stipend) and her election as co-chair of the Canadian League of Poets. The acquisition of a brief-case became in his eyes the hated symbol of her growing professionalism. He confessed that after he disposed of the body, he flung the briefcase as far as he could into the bushes. It is a sad irony that the brief-case seems to have been the one private repository of her working papers for a writer who had no office, room or desk of her own.
The tendency of every prominent artist after death to become a contested site is amply illustrated by the acrimonious exchanges that followed the Gzowski radio tribute. Here, too, the insider-outsider theme ran through the rancorous charges, often in a way diametrically opposed to Roy Lowther's assessment. Her one-time friend, Milton Acorn, characterized Lowther as an exile, marginalized by the Toronto-centric literary elite. Similar disagreements continue to emerge over the evaluation of Lowther's talent, and Wiesenthal examines them under the heading "Canonicity and the 'Cult of the Victim.'"; One critic sees the violent death as an event that raised a poet of mediocre talent to a place among the "saints in CanLit heaven."; Another uses the death to read the poetry as prescient, and the poet as a prophet of her own doom. Others urge resistance to allowing the death to become a factor in the complicated process of judging the poetry. Wiesenthal sensibly argues for a distinction between the elevation of the woman to iconic status, and canonization of the literary artist.
The scholarly analyses in the first section of the book give way in later sections to more traditional biographical narratives. Wiesenthal tracks Lowther's working class ancestry and background, her decision to quit school at sixteen, her first marriage two years later, the birth of her first child at nineteen, divorce, custody battles, political activism, a second marriage, more children, and the disastrous deterioration of the marriage. Throughout all this, the one constant was Lowther's persistence in learning her craft, growing as an artist, and publishing her work.
Wiesenthal ends her study on a note that highlights the poignancy of Lowther's death. She describes Lowther on her fortieth birthday. She had returned to Vancouver after a successful reading tour on Prince Edward Island, packed up her children and was enjoying a family holiday on Mayne Island. She celebrated her birthday there on July 29th. "With her forties stretching before her,"; Wiesenthal notes, "she was beginning again, as she'd once told Dorothy Livesay, to see openings for herself."; A Stone Diary, the book she had just submitted to Oxford University Press was accepted on September 9th. She died two weeks later. Roy Lowther died in 1985 in prison. 080203635X
--by Joan Givner
[BCBW 2005] "Poetry"
Submitted on July 19, 2005 in By David.
