Synopses & Reviews
Having written books in practically every genre, George Bowering is often introduced as someone who adores baseball, yet ironically he did not begin this book about the game until he was appointed Canadas first Poet Laureate for 200204. This picaresque memoir of a road trip with his fiancée through the storied ballparks of a poets youthful dreams is built on the bargain of fictionthat the narration of someone elses life requires the listener or reader to fill in the blanks of what we know is out there, somewhere in the world, but which takes place at such a great distance of time and space from us that we can only imagine it to be real.
Beginning with the exquisite charm of listening in on Bowering as a youthful sports reporter in his home town of Oliver in 1948, the greatest year in human history,” moving through the brash hubris of his career as a star playerreporter in the Kosmic League of the 1970s, to staring down the bittersweet foul line of the Twilight League of the twentyfirst century, Baseball Love is a book about Bowerings life in love and the game, played with a consummate craft and skill into the paradise of what we can only ever imagine to be real, and leavened at all times by the conscious and playfully ironic chatter of the infield.
Its provenance uncertain, the diamond in the ballparkwhere no cars are allowed to drive, where time stands still unless theres an out and where one adheres to the rules governing behavior in the yardis the quintessential North American vision of paradise: a walled garden in the midst of the dark satanic mills of blind industrial progress and the chaos of the everyday in the exploited wilderness that surrounds it.
Review
Baseball Love has a lot going for it, thanks to Bowerings eye for the oddball side of the game
Makes for an entertaining read.”
Vancouver Sun
The indispensable George Bowerings Baseball Love is a winning memoir cum love story, as Canadas first poet laureate and his lady embark on a memorablein every sensebaseball trope: the road trip.”
Globe and Mail
In the annals of CanBall prose, Baseball Love only proves further Mr. Bowerings reputation as the master.”
Dave Bidini
George Bowering doesnt play fair. Baseball Love is so good there is no memoir in the league that can go up against it. Bowering has a sense of story and an eye for detail that eliminate the possibility that he was a lousy second baseman. Reading a home run is fun.”
Robert Kroetsch
As anyone who played with him or attended minor league games at Vancouvers picturesque Nat Bailey Stadium is aware, he talked a better game than he played. To say this is no insult, either. Bowering had a truly unique and fabulous baseball mouth as both player and fan. He literally never shuts up at a game, and he is almost always outrageously funny
Baseball Love is a love poem to baseball, beautifully and wittily written, and a subtle piece of social history. Not many people stay in love for sixty years, and there are few writers with a sharper eye than George Bowering. That makes this a worthwhile read for baseball fans, and anyone else with an appreciation of deep and abiding fidelities.”
Dooneys Cafe
Synopsis
Bowerings life in the game unfolds in a picaresque memoir of the storied ballparks of the poets youthful dreams.
About the Author
George BoweringGeorge Bowering, Canadas first Poet Laureate and co-founder of the avant-garde poetry magazine TISH, was born in the Okanagan Valley.
A distinguished novelist, poet, editor, professor, historian and tireless supporter of fellow writers, Bowering has authored more than eighty books, including works of poetry, fiction, autobiography, biography and youth fiction.
In 2002, Bowering was recognized by the Vancouver Sun as one of the most influential people in British Columbia.
In 2011, he received the Lieutenant Governors Award for Literary Excellence in British Columbia.