The Masks of Drought by William Everson (review)

Reviews 67 “For A Young South Dakota Man” and the concluding marathon poem, “American Roads” are two which for me are quintessentially Freya Manfred. No need to quote portions of them here because they defy such fragmenta­ tion. What they prove, among other even more important, lovely things, is that American daughters have marvellous ways of making a place of their very own — roads and continents beyond any once sheltered room. ROBERT GISH, University of Northern Iowa The Masks of Drought. By William Everson. (Santa Barbara: Black Spar­ row Press, 1980. 92 pages, $4.00.) The Masks of Drought, with its tastefully executed three-color cover, with its hand-set type and linotype composition, is a book to restore one’s faith in books. The printing reflects quality and balance; the poetry within is of equal bent. The crushing drought in California of 1976-77 inspired both the title of the volume and provided the impetus for the creation ofmany of the poems. Buthow could such a “monstrous drought”engender poetry, and particularly poetry in a significant new direction for William Everson? The answer is contained in one of the poems, “Summer of Fire.” It was, quite straight-forwardly, “. . . the rages of excess,” the immense drought and the fire-storms which lashed California that year which ended the poet’s own poetic drought. This physical enactment of what Robinson Jeffers years earlier called “The Excesses of God” sent Everson’s poetry in a new and firm direction, back to the Presences endemic in the natural world in which the poet lives and from which he derives his sustenance. The most touching poem is “Moongate,” a thoughtful and fraternal sketch of the contrasting relationship between the two Everson brothers, originally of Selma, California, now temporarily encamped in Baja, Cali­ fornia. There is fine descriptive technique evident in these lines telling of the moon’s glow over the ocean’s surface: Glancing west, I see the red moon low on the sea, Sinking fast. A ribbon of cloud, Sealing the horizon, divides like a curtain, Closing a stage of consciousness, Preparing for exit. To anyone who has read the verse of Robinson Jeffers with some atten­ tion, it is pleasant and memorable at once to see some of Jeffers’ phraseology re-born and re-cast in many of these poems of William Everson. There is nothing amiss in such borrowings since actually they are not borrowings; rather, they are homages paid from the poetical subconscious. It would be 68 Western American Literature improper not to employ them since these phrases are masterful ones which have become one with the poet’s mien. Jeffers would not have minded since these usages are neither imitative nor obsequious. They are derivative and gain here a new life of their own. But what is most pervasive in The Masks of Drought is a mature and often noble sense of the passage of time; not a tamed poet here, but, like Jeffers before him, a religious poet venerating the “mystery of worship” of the natural w’orld around him. At their best, some of these poems (as from “Jay Breed”) do well To reveal from beyond the screen of Nature The life of God. MARLAN BEILKE, Amador City, California Is This Naomi? And Other Stories. By L. D. Clark. (Tucson: University of Arizona, Blue Moon Press, 1980. 98 pages, $4.95.) L. D. Clark gives us the inner life of man, his growing up through diverse stories, with different protagonists and viewpoints. But unity of outlook prevails from childhood to senility. Why has he called the book “Is This Naomi?” The Lord had sent her out full but she had returned empty. The five-year-old boy in the first story has not even arrived “full.” His father has died before his birth, a loss he finally conquers through his imagination and the help of Uncle Hob, the one dominant male in his environment. Next, a child confronts fear, through the long dark night of his grand­ father’s death, and the familiar family wrangling over religion. Early he has to make his peace both with the “wall of death” and the inconsistency of organized religion. The...