The Cleaving by William Studebaker (review)

376 Western American Literature Unlike her contemporaries Allen, Silko, Momaday, Vizenor and Welch, Hale does not rely on American Indian oral tradition as a unifying element. Hale structures her novel, and Cecelia Capture pieces together the fragments of her world without the help of Spider Woman, Coyote or Raven. Unlike protagonists in other novels by Indian writers, Cecelia Capture has no pueblo, no place, no sense of tradition to return to for strength. She alone of major characters in recent Indian novels confronts her displacement and alienation as an isolated individual and demonstrates the possibility for, if not success, at least survival. While at times the prose flattens disturbingly in this second novel, at many more moments it rises in wonderful richness. Cecelia dreams, and in the dream “the snow fell on her, covered her long, long straight black hair, which lay spread out around her, covered her eyelids and then her entire face. Soon she would be buried in snow, would die when her blood turned to ice. That would be all right. That would be the way she always hoped that she would die, like Moses Brokentooth back home. ...” In this novel, Janet Campbell Hale has given us a valuable addition to the panorama of contemporary Indian life in America. LOUIS OWENS University of New Mexico The Cleaving. By William Studebaker. (Lewiston, Idaho: Confluence Press, 1985. 64 pages, $6.95.) The Cleaving, William Studebaker’s second full-length collection of poems, is a departure from his previous works—Everything Goes Without Saying (his first collection) and Trailing the Raven (a chapbook). In this latest collection, Studebaker writes about love as a way of discovering and transcending the self. The voice that emerges is thoughtful and meditative, like that of someone who has returned from a long journey, tired and hungry, a bit humbled by experience, but glad to be home. Like other poets of the American West, Studebaker combines Zen Buddhist philosophy with rever­ ence for the still vast and uncorrupted western landscape. The book is divided into three sections based on the three Daughters of Desire. “Fulfillment,” the most successful section, celebrates nature, children, and the body, but most of all it sings the joys of fulfilling love. “After Soak­ ing in the Hot Springs,” the longest poem in the collection, captures the essence of Studebaker’s vision—the need to heal ourselves by reducing life to its bare essentials. KARYN RIEDELI, College of Southern Idaho ...