Another Tough Hop by Ford Swetnam (review)

262 Western American Literature Whalen, long overlooked as an influence on northwestern writers, published a collection entitled Memoirs of an Interglacial Age. He wasn’t kidding despite his great humor, and nearly 30 years later, neither is Charles Potts. This is the real postmodern western American poetry. Read it while you can. SCOTT PRESTON Ketchum, Idaho Another Tough Hop. By Ford Swetnam. (Pocatello, Idaho: Walrus and Carpenter Books, 1991. 36 pages, $9.95.) As a lifelong reader of poetry who remains unmoved by the offerings of publications like The New Yorker, I am always delighted to discover an accom­ plished western poet. In Another Tough Hop, Idahoan Ford Swetnam offers us twenty-three pieces well worth reading for their sustained quality, varied form, and distinctly western materials and themes. Most of Swetnam’s poems are situated in the Intermountain West. Their subjects range from environment to art, from sports to domesticity. Their themes focus on personal relationship and responsibility: responsibility to wives, lovers, friends, siblings, children, parents; to art; and especially to the land. Swetnam’s use of landscape would seem to place him among the Pacific Northwest-Rocky Mountain poets. But in contrast to Stafford and Hugo, Swetnam’s Intermountain landscape demands physical sacrifice of its human trespassers and bears the marks of past and present degradations. It is an autumnal landscape of isolating ridges and valleys that are “all railroaded away” (“Asking an Old Man to Dinner”). As much as I like the western poems, I would choose three southern poems as the best in the volume. Set in the South of Swetnam’s youth, they deal with social issues. “Putting By,”for example, is an account of the Depression genera­ tion, raised to “stock up,” which Swetnam compares metaphorically with the “hardened children” of Anatolia. In “Worth the Hire” Swetnam celebrates common laborers: “God may not know/How many yards of concrete fill/The pillars and abutm ents/Of the Purcellville bridge, but they could tell him These southern poems are profoundly redemptive. Most readers will find Swetnam’s poems approachable. His vocabulary is exact and accessible. He draws allusions from folklore and popular culture as much as from art and literature. In “Even Homer Shrugs,” for example, Swetnam mixes allusions to IwoJima war stories with references to the Achilles legend. Another Tough Hop is a collection that one can return to with fresh discover­ ies. I look forward to seeing more from this western émigré. JENNIFER EASTMAN ATTEBERY Idaho State Historical Society ...