We Need to Dream All This Again by Bernard Pomerance (review)

358 Western American Literature conservation. Most of his portraits run about fifteen pages and, given the limits of space, summarize well the following individuals’ contributions to land preservation: Marsh, Frederick Law Olmstead, Carl Schurz, John Burroughs, George Bird Grinnell, Theodore Roosevelt, William Hornaday, Benton MacKaye , Robert Marshall, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Howard Zahniser, Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Ralph Nader, and Amory Lovins. As Wild admits in his introduction, he is not trying to revive the Great Man Theory by focusing on personalities. He is merely writing for the person who has heard of a John Burroughs or Rachel Carson and who wants to know more about the figures behind the names. Thus, the general reader will find this careful work of journalistic research an interesting and informative read. A teacher might use the book and its bibliography of mostly secondary sources to help prepare a class. The scholar, on the other hand, will still do better to consult primarysources or books like Stephen Fox’sJohn Muir and HisLegacy. Wild does not apply a strong critical perspective to each conservationist. He mostly describes and appreciates. Still, in all, I found his book enjoyable, if for no other reason than the fact that Peter Wild writes so well. And he’s done his homework. Moreover, his introductory and concluding chapters state well the environmental problems facing our world and indicate what we can learn from these conservationists. JIM ATON Southern Utah State College We Need to Dream All This Again. By Bernard Pomerance. (New York: Vik­ ing Penguin, 1987. 101 pages, $15.95.) We Need to Dream All This Again is more than a powerful account of the struggle for the Black Hills, the clash of people and cultures. It is a tour de force, a daring and often brilliant weaving of prose and poetry, history and drama, narrative and dream, as if only a new genre could hope to capture the multiple dimensions of the subject. Bernard Pomerance, award-winning author of The Elephant Man, offers us history transformed by the poetic vision. The poetry here is at once intensely personal in its impact and epic in its scope, innovative in technique and ageless in resonance. On the one hand, we have a story of war, the great struggle of peoples and forces in which visions are revealed and destinies forged, including the story of heroes like Red Cloud (Mahpiua Luta) and Crazy Horse (Tashunka Witko) —as told by a distinctly American Homer. On the other hand, we have a dramatic portrait of the spirit of place (the “holy Black Hills,” the American West, the continent) presented with the fidelity to detail and the subtle cadences of a William Carlos Williams. Even Pomerance’s simple and effortless prose yields the inspired music and seer-vision we associate with grand poetry—with depth of insight, preci­ Reviews 359 sion of thought, and nuance of intonation, “with bursts of light and dark” and “shades of meaning” few can “match today, nor often perhaps, ever.” One minute the work comes straight at us like “Dr. J. driving on Bill Russell,” or awes us with the dazzle of a world-class gymnast; the next, it deepens our attention with haiku-like suggestion (“Warbonnets across the ridge / sift the wind for news. / Eagle plumes bend left / then right.”). One minute a ghostgoosed general calls Custer “a dickhead” (my office shakes with the guffaw) ; the next, times are super-imposed to reveal aspects of each through the other. This is daring stuff, the stuff of dreams, ready to jump out and surprise, even shock, at every moment, with the power of vision and also the texture of a human experience that ranges from pissing to thinking, from subtleties of strategic awareness to Tonight-show t.v. Smalltalk. Pomerance’s supple, athle­ tic imagination carries us, leap by leap, across the normal barriers of time and space and cultural circumstance to new perspectives on ourselves and our history—thus, the regenerative power of dreaming. I have no idea what historians will think, but lovers of literature must regard We Need to Dream All This Again as a major work by an important American writer. RICHARD BODNER Land of Enchantment...