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Reviews 277 and Elements (1988)—consistently reflects the same area of the West as The Meadow, including his home country around Boulder Ridge and Sheep Creek, with its isolation, sometimes harsh beauty, and independent residents. Because of Galvin’s accomplishments as a poet over the last twenty years, readers of The Meadow should also be drawn to his poetry. Reading Lethal Frequencies and the earlier collections, along with The Meadow, illuminates the shaping of a writer’s art and outlook through kinship with a piece of western country and the inevitable changes it undergoes, which have always formed a strong theme in the region’s writing. And along with interest in the works them­ selves, there is value in seeing the way prose and poetry rooted in Boulder Ridge become not regional color but universal literature. Galvin’s poems in Lethal Frequencies vary in length, form, and subject. The shortest is two lines, the longest five pages. Some are straightforward, while oth­ ers can be elliptical and riddle-like. There are childhood memories, explorations of country and character, love poems, considerations of spirituality, philosophi­ cal inquiries, and always views of nature and its relationship to human life. Intellectuality in some poems is mixed with others centered on ordinary, day-today concerns of ranchers and back-country residents. In keeping with the vol­ ume’s title, a sense of mortality appears frequently in the poems—the death of older friends and neighbors, the loneliness of survivors, abrupt changes of sea­ son in high country, ravages of floods and blizzards, the loss of land and older ways of life and values. James Galvin’s work reveals much about a writer’s evolving relationship to place . .. and about the literary art he has created from it in prose and poetry. ROBERT RORIPAUGH University of Wyoming Changing Seasons and other poems. By John E. Smelcer. (Berrima, Australia: South Head Press, 1995. 61 pages, $10.00.) John Smelcer’s poems are painterly and precise. One of the tasks of plein air poetry is to capture a moment and give it clear meaning. Smelcer succeeds admirably in poems such as “Late September on the Russian River,” “Bonanza Creek,” and “The Fleet.” As in the Asian landscape tradition, the human figures in Smelcer’s world do not generally draw attention to themselves. Of far greater importance is the land itself, the weather, the birds, and large ungulates—caribou and moose. And in Smelcer’s work we hear the rhythms of his ancestors—their durable breath. At times a reader, captivated by Smelcer’s watercolor arctic landscape, wants the figures to step out of the mists, wants these poems to be larger, more open, and wants to know the entire story. There is somewhat too much solitude, 278 Western American Literature too much standing alone in Changing Seasons. Yet because Smelcer also belongs to the Western tradition, there are times, albeit few, when the “I” of the poet overwhelms the scene. In Changing Seasons Smelcer struggles with the nature poet’s paradox— how to be both observer and participant, how to be connected and yet stand apart. Often his poetry strikes the perfect balance. One hopes that Smelcer’s painstaking studies find a way onto a larger canvas. KEVIN HOLDSWORTH Ogden, Utah The Red Drum. By Jane Candia Coleman. (Glendo, Wyoming: High Plains Press, 1995. 69 pages, $9.95.) The clear language, easy rhythms, and conventional views of the West in this volume may at first deceive readers into believing these are simple poems. Yet Coleman’s strong powers of observation and ability to vividly recreate images often give the poems unexpected intensity and satisfying resolution. Acoma Pueblo poet Simon Ortiz has said that writers should clarify, not mystify, even if huge mysteries are at the heart of the work. The Red Drum seems to exemplify this principle, filtering tangles of history and human behav­ ior through the clarifying lens of rainstorms, landscapes, and gently churning seasons. In “Acoma Pueblo,” the physical demands of climbing to the hill town are rewarded, after proper submission to the forces of nature, with “the truth of resurrection.” Structurally, three verses describing wind and sky are snugly framed at beginning and end...

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