Wingbone: Poetry from Colorado ed. by Janice Hays, Pamela Haines, and City Kite on a Wire: 38 Denver Poets ed. by Ray Gonzalez (review)

178 Western American Literature Finally, Lorenzo Thomas’ title poem, “Liquid City,” strives to reconcile the ancient bayous and the modern towers of steel, stone, and glass, but recog­ nizes that “glass is a shifting liquid,” thus highlighting what all the pieces sug­ gest in varying degrees: Houston is difficult to define because this “liquid” city is constantly being redefined by its ever growing skyline and its ever shifting population and diverse ethnic groups set against remnants of its frontier, “small-town” past. Overall: provocative views of a provocative city in transition. THOMAS W. FORD University of Houston Wingbone: Poetry from Colorado. Selected and edited by Janice Hays and Pamela Haines. (Colorado Springs: Sudden Jungle Press, 1986. 157 pages, $9.95 paper.) City Kite on a Wire: 38 Denver Poets. Edited by Ray Gonzalez. (Denver: Community College of Denver Graphic Arts Department, 1986. 96 pages, $5.00 paper.) Between them these two small anthologies contain work by seventy-five Colorado poets, seven of whom appear in both volumes. Wingbone is the more comprehensive of the two because it includes some of the good Colorado poets who live outside of Denver, mostly in the university towns. While none of these poets is exactly a household name outside of the state, many of them have appeared in the better little magazines and some have been previously anthol­ ogized. Few Colorado poets have ever appeared in the standard anthologies of American poetry, but after examining these books one is inclined to believe that this is about to change. These are serious poets writing in a modern idiom. While there is much diversity here, there are few poems that could be labeled traditional in either content or form. In fact, the Wingbone book has deliberately excluded poems which rely on “sentimentality or nineteenth-century forms and meters.” This is definitely not the sort of verse that one might find in the annual volumes of the local poetry club. In form all of these poems can perhaps be included under the general heading of free verse, but within this category they range from a few that approach regular metrical patterns to a dozen outright prose poems. Endrhyme and decorative phrases are almost completely absent. Many of the poems exhibit successful marriages of form and content, and within some of them the form varies to suggest changes in the poet’s mood. Final lines of two or three words are a common feature, even in poems in which the average line is rather long. As in virtually all contemporary poetry, influences of earlier Reviews 179 poets are discernible, but this reviewer found nothing approaching outright imitation. It is not possible to predict who among this large and promising group of mostly young poets will achieve wider recognition in the years ahead. There are some very fine poets represented, but in a brief review it would be unfair to single out one or two, while ignoring others of equal promise. It is enough perhaps to note that these two volumes offer proof that serious poetry is alive and well today in one western state not noted in the past for its literary achievement. ROBERT D. HARPER Estes Park, Colorado Marking the Magic Circle: an Intimate Geography. By George Venn. Photo­ graphs by Jan Boles. (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1987. 196 pages, $12.95.) Poetry, autobiography, literary history, translation, fiction,essay—all these forms await the reader of George Venn’s elegant text which makes one nostal­ gic for a childhood with a barn. A thesis is advanced here: human life lived in intimacy with the environment is centered, perhaps sacred; and the litera­ ture which arises from such a life has substance, is perhaps healing. “From the long effects of time in place comes a kind of spiritual ecology, an intimate genealogy, a novel.” A region, the microcosm, fosters the values of “confidence, wholeness, intimacy”; the distinguishing feature of the Northwest microcosm seems to reside in nature and the human response to it. The “magic circle” sustains and renews its inhabitants. Venn shows in his poetry a care for language and for true naming; in “Making Porridge” a bowl of oats reflects the geography of a life...