A survey of Bowering's writing becomes a study of the principles of language at work: the subtleties of cadence and rime, the use of the lyric or serial poem form, the associative way in which language sometimes unfolds, as well as Bowering's use of the poetic breath line and rambling prose line. (p. 83)

Bowering willingly acknowledges the poets of the American Black Mountain school as having been a primary influence upon his writing. (pp. 83-4)

Sticks & Stones, with a preface by Robert Creeley, indicates, as do his early poems in Tish [a newsletter of poetry and poetics], his immediate overriding concern with the process and practice of composition. The first poem in the collection, "Wattles", suggests metaphorically how composition begins:

                           sticks & stones
 
              you begin to build
 
                           from moments
                           of strictest energy
                           upwards

The sticks and stones are words, the building blocks of language. Implied in the connection between...