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Rustlings Above Saururus Hollow by John Caldwell Arlington, VA: Caldwell Publications, 1985. 79 pp. No price indicated. John Caldwell explicitly takes mountains and mountain life as his subject in this gathering of poems. "Mountain living," he states in a preface, "attracts hearty individualists who present distinctive states of mind as well as tonics for living to the outside world." Many of the poems are profiles and character sketches of people from his particular place—Saururus Hollow, in Virginia—who embody the hardy pioneer spirit, ruggedness and resourcefulness "Of hearts and minds that had forged life and/Made it possible in a wilderness" (McCready's Inheritance). A related motive in these poems is to explain a misunderstood people: "And if/Those who dwell beyond these mountains and hills/Do not understand folk, tell them it/Is because they live in the wilds of a/Green mountain that they are able to see/Over and beyond..." (The Robins Have Flown Away). But it is not in his programmatic approach to his place and people, or in his explicit treatment of their lives that he is most successful. The poems themselves reveal that the ultimate motive behind his poems goes beyond explaining or extolling his native place. In "Ann Understands the Fugitive" the author explains how a neighbor girl drops by from time to time to talk about "poems, pictures, and things." The author tells her: "Poetry is my religion." He elaborates: "It's like it is for you when you're standing/Barefoot on your pony's back and looking/Skyward....It's a point of balance." Caldwell's writing is strongest when he reveals the virtues, values and attitudes of his native place implicitly, in his own experiences, actions and attitudes. For example, he may be sensitive to the notion that mountain people have been misunderstood because he sees himself as a misunderstood loner and outsider . A seeker himself, he understands why a man might strike off alone in search of gold: "O I sense a fineness in the spirit/Of a man who seeks for gold" (One Who Seeks For Gold). He feels "Out of Time and Place," estranged from other people (They Don't Understand Me Anymore). He is scornful of conventional, comfortable people who invite him to join them if he will only conform to their tastes and opinions (The Invitation/The Decline). But the goal of all his seeking is to "find my way home at last, a place/Somewhere to alight in friendly trees—in/From all this sullen, still, and drunken night" (A Place to Alight). In this combination of individualism coupled with love of place Caldwell best exemplifies the values and attitudes of the people he extolls. Caldwell renders his subjects with varying degrees of success. His use of dialect is sometimes unconvincing and decorative. His portraits of individuals occasionally read like prose broken into lines of verse (Old Henry). Occasionally he borrows a lofty phrase that seems ill at ease in its homely context ( "per chance to sleep, to dream" (The Sapplin' Chair). He employs archaic spellings for dubious atmospheric effect (olde for old) and refers to older forms such as sot, fetch and tote as jargon (The Robins Have Flown Away). In descriptions of nature he resorts to conventional personification: "And the big eye of God became distraught/When it saw Nature lower her veil..." (The Ibid Song: A Fugitive's Lament). He too readily substitutes folk speech, or the semblance of it, for the earned language of poetry (Appalachian Conversation ). Sometimes he diminishes the effect 115 of a vivid image and interesting viewpoint by attaching a long rumination (Today My Shadow Crossed Your Path). But when he trusts particulars with their own meaning, he creates effective images. His use of folk speech is more successful in "A Mite more than 'An Eye For An Eye'," in which an unnamed narrator tells a gory tale from the frontier period involving a murdered Indian girl and reprisal taken on her murderer. The incident is told cleanly and dramatically and, as the title indicates, with effective understatement. "The Broken White Arrowhead" strikes a neat balance between thought and feeling: the memory of a moment...

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