Building Bicycles in the Dark: A Practical Guide to Writing by John B. Lee (review)

humanities 347 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 Camões=s unabashed personification, with its roots in classical epic and its pagan aura, was sufficiently disturbing both to the Roman Catholic censors and to neoclassical critics. The poem compounds the problem, though, by its indulgence of perhaps the most troubling of modern thought=s figures, prosopopeia. Prosopopeia is a highly charged >gift= of voice, of language, to those objects >lacking= one. Prosopopeia makes the non-human, or posthuman , or (by extension) non-European Other speak back. It marks a wishful transcendence of the inevitable human limitation most frequently marked by prosopopeia=s rhetorical complement, the apostrophe. Thus, for Cochran, Camões at the dawning of modernity encounters and represents B by transgressing it B one of modern thought=s foundational limits. This portion of Cochran=s argument is entirely compelling, and more compelling in its detail and nuance than in summary, and suggests much for those working on the meeting points of history, rhetoric, and the European colonial enterprise. The remainder of the book is more notable for its specific insights into key theorists, insights more often than not produced by the juxtapositions noted above, than for its overarching arguments. But in taking prosopopeia past de Man and restoring rhetoric to history, Cochran=s volume does much. (KIM MICHASIW) John B. Lee. Building Bicycles in the Dark: A Practical Guide to Writing Black Moss Press. 156. $19.95 This is a readable and lively book that offers both more and less than its title promises. Lee is a prolific Canadian poet and anthologist who publishes at least two books a year and who makes a living giving workshops on creative writing to school and public audiences. Part 1 of this volume, >Chasing the Feeling,= sets out advice in five short exhortatory chapters covering the writing process, poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and getting published. Part 2, >Sending Yourself to the School of Yourself,= gives an extensive set of exercises, citing sample pieces completed according to the directions. Lee is his own best example, and a substantial portion of the book consists of his poems and prose poems. The advice is sensible and fairly standard: try out non-linear thinking, read your work out loud, engage all five senses, draft first and then edit. It stresses accessibility, advising writers to avoid deliberate obscurity and to try out their work with other readers as part of the writing process. Lee likes traditional forms, reiterating that we should learn the rules of the craft before breaking them. The exercises follow this advice, focusing mainly on the poetic use of language. Lee sets out examples of sound poetry and visual effects, and takes us through exercises in incorporating sensual details into verse and in using metaphor and simile. His examples and explanations cover classical forms such as the sonnet, the villanelle, and the 348 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 ode, as well as rhyming doggerel and the riddle. The examples are light and popular; Lee isn=t embarrassed to note that some of his pieces are failed experiments. In fact, Building Bicycles in the Dark doesn=t at all leave us in the dark about how to put together well-constructed pieces of writing. It might well attract young readers or other amateurs of creative writing and give them new and manageable challenges to try out; it could be pleasant reading for anyone who likes playing with language. The book, however, isn=t as practical a guide to writing as its subtitle promises. It is disappointing in its thin treatment of prose, giving intriguing but vague advice such as >be true to the tale in the telling.= Compared to forty-two pages of exercises and examples on writing poetry, there are only fifteen for activities on writing prose. The second paragraph in the section >Where Poetry and Prose Meet= asks readers to write their own stories starting from a list of opening lines. The lines turn out to come from seven passages of Lee=s own prose poetry, which are quoted in the next eight pages. The book has...