Highway Suite by Emily Warn (review)

Reviews 177 Highway Suite. By Emily Warn. (Boise, Idaho: Limberlost Press, 1988. 32 pages, $8.50.) William Stafford has written of the language journeys a writer takes in the creation of a poem, that verbal creation that offers the reader an adventure down a similar road. Emily Warn’ssmall book Highway Suite offers the reader the literal and figurative trips down paths that are at once narrative and lyrical ventures into the landscape of a seasoned heart. The title poem, the first one in the book, is a good example of what the poet offers. “Highway Suite” begins with a sorrowful and abstract “Leaving again” and quickly moves to the concrete “my car drowns up the pass” a good mixing of lines provoking curiosity and providing story. The poem moves on to include four parts, though there are no stanza breaks in the twenty-one lines. The second part, lines five through twelve, piles up adjective imagery of where the speaker drives, a “rain-gorged” place giving way “to white slopes of snow.” In the third section of “Highway Suite” similes dominate. The time on the road is like “after I say goodbye” or it is like “after a dive into the mind’s solitary waters.” Here Warn again combines a good mix of question and plot. The “goodbye” is from whom or from what? The water and swimming images with the driving images are suggestive of the renewing and refreshing experi­ ence she travels through. The last part of the poem, lines seventeen through twenty-one, begins following a colon and drives home the central idea of the poem:these are times when we “become ourselves,” times that involve isolation which we wish to prolong but which we know are transitory. This is a sweet moment Warn describes in her poem, and one of the reasons this is a sweet book is that the poet taps some basic American feelings for the road and for our changing lives so full of people we are always leaving. But this is a good book for several other reasons too. It is handsomely letter pressed at Limberlost Press on beautiful paper, and it is hand sewn between a cloth-like cover. A pen-and-ink drawing of a highway on the cover con­ tributes to making it attractive. In addition, a handsome type is evenly printed in black, with bold green titles for the poems. There is talk these days about the death of the small press, about little publishing not living up to the promise of a few years ago. Of course, English professors do have to have something to talk about at the literary conferences to insure promotion and raises for next year. The fact is, small presses are alive and well, and they are producing some of the best poetry written in Canada and the United States. Compare the quality of some new works coming from major publishers to the books and chapbooks coming from small presses in the West and it is easy to see that the small printing companies are vital ingredi­ ents in our literature. EmilyWarn’slittle book offers what many small presses offer: good poetry. JIM HARRIS New Mexico Junior College ...