Balzac’s Dolls and Other Essays, Studies, and Literary Sketches by Greg Boyd (review)

90 Western American Literature. BRIEF NOTICES Artifacts. By B. J. Buckley. (Saratoga, Wyoming: The Willow Bee Publishing House, 1987. 80 pages, $8.95.) Robert Roripaugh said of B. J. Buckley that she has a “distinctive voice and poetic consciousness.” I agree. In the title poem “Artifacts,” in “Pre­ history: A Fairy Tale,” and in “Roadkill,” Buckley speaks in a voice as sparklingly clear as a Wyoming winter night. However, her strength becomes a weakness in this little book, as every poem, no matter what the subject, echoes the same voice. While this makes for a consistent and even tone, it also makes for some impatience on the part of the reader as her reading progresses. I wanted to read a different reaction occasionally; I wanted more than just a bittersweet, funereal sort of musing. Buckley does have promise as a poet, how­ ever. She handles images well, turning words into memorable phrases: “mar­ bles unearthed in the garden like seeds of statues.” —Charlotte M. Wright Balzac’sDolls and Other Essays, Studies, and Literary Sketches. ByGreg Boyd. (Daphne, Alabama: Legrete Press, 1987. 145 pages, n.p.) This is, as Boyd states in his foreword, a literary sampler. In fifteen chap­ ters he covers such varied subjects as “The Contemporary American Prose poem,” two often-dismissed stories of John Steinbeck (“Breakfast” and “The Snake”), and the work of Charles Baudelaire. Of special interest to WAL readers is his essay review of three books by Charles Bukowski, in which he calls Bukowski “an artist condemned to live and create in an ugly world, a man given too few choices in an absurd society.” Balzac’sDolls also includes a short review of Marine Robert Warden’sBeyond the Straits, another work known to WAL readers. Though I found fault with the book’s format, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of literary criticism between the book’scovers. —Charlotte M. Wright Cowboy. By Bernard Wolf. (NY: Morrow, 1985. 76 pages, $13.00 cloth.) A tribute to a changing way oflife in the West, Cowboy combines Bernard Wolf’sstraightforward text and telling photos to capture the grit and love and work cowboying demands. Leading the reader through the spring roundup, branding, cutting and tagging of calves, through the challenge of the rodeo, and through one man’s struggle to save his ranch from the mining claims sur­ rounding his land, Cowboy cleanly portrays a vanishing tradition in western American life. —ScottCheney ...