SOURCE: Bishop, Neil B. “Installations.” Canadian Literature, no. 135 (winter 1992): 158-60.

In the following review, Bishop offers a positive assessment of Installations, calling the work “a joy.”

It is paradoxical but stimulating to read these two books [Installations and Corps de glorie] together. The authors seem to share little either as poets or individuals, with the exception of Montreal (and while Brossard is a long-time Montrealer, [Juan] Garcia lived there only from 1957 to 1967, although he has continued to publish there since). And although metaphysical preoccupations are present in some of Brossard's large body of work, they are not nearly as religiously-oriented as in Garcia's poems, where references to a monotheistic religion and mystical elements often clearly related to Christianity are thematically predominant. Stylistically also, the two books diverge so markedly as to signify profound ideological differences.

While Nicole Brossard's work is well-known among Anglophone Canadian literature aficionados, Juan Garcia's...