Snowmelt by Shaun T. Griffin (review)

324 WesternAmerican Literature The book containsworksofthe everyday, the ordinaryexperiences oflife, but it also contains poems of the extraordinary, the sublime, those moments of heightened aware­ ness in which we knowwhywe sayyes to the privatejourneys we take through our various geographies. Manycritics have concluded thatOrtiz isno less than the bestNativeAmerican poet at work today. Jim Harrison has written that “in Ortiz there is a quiet omniscience expressed only by talents of the first order.” From Acoma pueblo in New Mexico, Ortiz has published several books, including FromSand Creek,and has receivednumerous awardsfor his contributions to Native and to American literature. Afterand BeforetheLightnings aspiritual adventure, and itshould do much to enhance his reputation asapoetic and propheticvoice from theAmerican West that speaks to all ofAmerica. JIM HARRIS NewMexicoJunior College, Hobbs Snowmelt. ByShaun T. Griffin. (Reno: Black Rock Press, 1994. 72 pages, $12.00.) Though Shaun Griffin has published previous volumes of poetry, Snowmelt (which features lovely stylizedillustrations ofthe Comstock Mountains byKaren Kreyeski) might be said to mark his arrival as the William Carlos Williams of Nevada. The title refers to spring runoff, a time offresh beginnings evoked in “ATaste ofMarch on the Comstock”: “A windchime flies/in the chill mountain air,/and the weighted back/of a lone Scotch pine/cracks the frozen drifts.” This kind of sparse lyricism and solitary detail enlivens many moments in Griffin’s poems, aswhen he gazes at his newborn son: “we watch/rapt/as the blue lines/pulse/in yourface”and “marvel/... aswe slip/ever deeper/into yourgrasp.”Hisworkoften mixes whimsy and realism, like “the playful path/of a desert creek gone dry.”There is, for instance, the opening of “The Last Beer in San Antonio”: This could well be the last beer I have in San Antonio: a cool, refreshing Tecate with limon ysal perusingjoseph Campbell’s introduction to ThePortableJung (how is it he lived in so manyworlds?) listening as my son rocks himselfto sleep with the gende purr of the cooler in the background. The rest of this poem proves unequal to its opening stanza, however, and the collection as a whole is uneven. Individual images and phrasings are sometimes better than the poems in which they appear. Griffin has Williams’flair for indelibly depicting everyday occurrences, as in his portrait ofa Mexican baker in “Bolillo Man.”But at other Reviews 325 times his interest in “the politics of poverty” produces mixed results. His speakers occasionally sound like Walter Pater in a soup kitchen. Snowmeltincludes poems on Vietnam and Israel, on reading the morning paper and watching aSaturdaynight crowd in a Palo Alto bookstore. His feel for western landscape is intimate, whether in images of ‘Jeffrey pines/arched in the Shasta sky”or of bustling breakfast restaurants: “Wedged in a bright, orange booth,/we jangled dreams over sausage and hotcakes;/the window was fogged with breath.” Griffin will be a poet to watch for in the coming years. MICHAEL KOWALEWSKI Carleton College edge walking on the western rim (sic). Edited and with profiles by Mayumi Tsutakawa. (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1994. 157 pages, $19.95.) The incongruous terrain of the Pacific Northwest—mountains, old growth forests, dense cities, and new suburban sprawl—has spawned a generation of writers distinct in their focus and perception. When twelve writers (really thirteen with the combination of work byWilliam Stafford and Kim R. Stafford) from Washington and Oregon were asked to write abouttheir relationship to the place they call home, the responseswere asdiverse and rich as the region itself. Gathered here are twelve original works from essayists, poets, and novelists, both nativesand newcomers to the northwestedge ofAmerica. These essaysand poems, which are autobiographical in nature, invite one to explore the inner and outer landscapes that allwriters confront, in the case of the Pacific Northwest, wind-swept coasts, lonely timber towns, and vast, arid deserts. One can range from salt water coasts, to the highest mountains and the driest deserts found anywhere in America. The writers anthologized here are David James Duncan, Colleen J. McElroy, Jonathan Raban, Sherman Alexie, Tom Spanbauer, Lawson Fusao Inada, Charlotte Watson Sherman, Tom Robbins, Brenda Peterson, Sam Hamill, Sharon Doubiago, and William and Kim R Stafford. The foreword is byShawn Wong and the introduction is by...