In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

296 Western American Literature But perhaps the abiding interest of the novel is neither historical nor literary. Written in haste and repented at leisure, it is one of those tantaliz­ ing failures whose central thesis is somehow more intriguing than the characters and contrivances that struggle to bring it to life. It is not life, though it reflects a truth of our existence; it is not literature, though it is a minor American cousin of Conrad’s “The Secret Agent” and Chesterton’s “The Man Who Was Thursday.” If we can smile at a story that never quite “arrives,” we can also sympathize with London’s artistic dilemma of trying to portray man’s self-defeating tendency to create a better world by destroying the one he inhabits. Such a story could only use itself up in the telling, and not everyone will find the resurrected misadventures of The Assassination Bureau entertaining, let alone instructive. As an anarchic fantasy, the novel is little more than a sputtering firecracker; but as a plot-it-yourself game which allows its reader to play along and second-guess the novel’s multiple authors, it is imaginative nitroglycerin. If you’ve already supplied your own ending to unfinished classics like “The Last Tycoon” or “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” you might, for want of better sport, have a go at this. HOWARD LACHTMAN, University of the Pacific Texas Liveoak. By Paul Foreman. (Berkeley: Thorp Springs Press/2311-C Woolsey/, 1977. 60 pages, $3.00.) Yarbrough Mountain. By Karl Kopp. (Phoenix: The Baleen Press/P.O. Box 13448/, 1977. 38 pages, $4.00.) Granite Station. By Don Thompson. (Bakersfield: Paper Boat Press/430 F St./, 1977. 21 pages, $2.00.) Don’t let anyone tell you poetry is dead, not in the West at any rate. In fact a pretty good argument might be made that western American poetry is finally coming to life, thanks in no small measure to the region’s burgeoning small press movement. Although Paul Foreman, Karl Kopp, and Don Thompson have all been widely published in literary magazines, none of the eastern biggies would handle their collections. Due to grants from such agencies as the National Endowment for the Arts and the Coordinating Council of Literary Maga­ zines, many small presses remain more interested in quality and uniqueness than in commercial viability; while they certainly publish their fair share Reviews 297 of junk, they also give us books like the three considered here, important, sensitive renderings of the human condition. If these three volumes are a fair sample, we should all write to Western Independent Publishers (P.O. Box 31249, San Francisco, CA 94131) for a catalog and investigate what else its member presses are producing. In the work of the three poets considered here there is evidence not only of great potential, but of high accomplishment as well. Their work manages regional fidelity and universality. Paul Foreman writes primarily of the Brazos River region of Texas, reflecting both its landscape and its values without parochialism. One poem from Texas Liveoak sums up well the wisdom that informs his work. It is called “A Father’s Word to His Son.” When you grow old, neither more nor lesswise, and have read all the books, and hold in your head all the universities have in store, And have traveled to far towns in foreign lands, and have spoke your way through ladies’gowns, remember, that here you once woke To a panther’swaul on Woodhouse Bluff, ate mussels you dug from the sand, grabbled catfish with your bare hand, and thought this world was world enough. In some ways, Foreman is the most versatile of the three poets con­ sidered here, and Texas Liveoak offers a fair sample of his styles. Of Frank Waters he writes: It is not I but the mountain in me that lifts me to these heights. I, I must go down; mountain will stay. His poem “Huddie Ledbetter” catches the twangy Texas jailhouse blues rhythm that made leadbelly world famous. What the dude in Houston didn’t know, Huddie, Was this: your belly’smade of iron, not lead, And when he had his knife in your...

pdf