The Red Drum by Jane Candia Coleman (review)

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 with subtle comments on humility and renewal. Like Mary Austin, Coleman smoothes the jagged edges of life with gener­ ous applications of imagistic and earthy philosophy. In “Lost Lambs,” two examples of human loss—one of a lamb, one of a son—are considered while looking “across the heat-fired plain,” understanding that “the heart of earth beats like a red drum” that buries all species “beside the throbbing, white bones shak­ en into dust.” In this poem nature is not amoral—the earth has a “heart”—but neither does it compromise. Perhaps her writing engages us most intensely, however, when she simply describes, as she does in “Horses,” an unencumbered view of “twelve gray hors­ es dancing,” marked forever in her mind as “a dream of arcs and angles/ mov­ ing on the silk screen of rain.” Again like Austin, Coleman shines when setting western characters in action with natural forces. In “Odd Lots,” we hear old Archie’s regrets about keeping a mountain lion in a barrel because “you can’t talk to a lion./ There’s nothing you can say/ she don’t already know.” Coleman’s poetic skills paint true and clear pictures: tragic native history, harsh beauty, landscapes with lessons, and mythic characters. It is a conven­ Reviews 279 tional view, but not wrong-headed or ungenerous. And, like old songs covered by a fresh singer, these remind us of good things. DEBRA L. PARK Central Wyoming College The Fever of Being. By Luis Alberto Urrea. (Albuquerque: West End Press, 1994. 82 pages, $9.95.) Luis Alberto Urrea’s poems here are, for the most part, narratives of a his­ tory of the son of a Mexican father and an American mother; Urrea’s relatives and languages zig zag along the frontier between his two countries. The book has fives chapters, “First Convocation,” “Procession,” “Ceremony,” “Horses,” and “Final Convocation.” The chapters gather memories of his life, beginning with a boyhood in Tijuana and moving through to adulthood, with poems focussing on such places as Boston, New Hampshire, Durango, Chihuahua, Texas, California, Wyoming, and Utah. “First Convocation” is comprised of one poem; “Final Convocation” has two poems. The chapters in between are the longer ones: “Procession” is set in Tijuana; “Ceremony” moves from Texas to New England; “Horses” involves the West, with Tom Horn and Geronimo a couple of its subjects. The poems of “Final Convocation” relate back to the whole, one quoting the narrator’s mother, the other mentioning Steve McQueen (who, incidentally, played the part of Tom Horn in his final film) and William Holden, another dead hero. Written in both English and Spanish, with a few poems only in Spanish, these poems remind one of such writers as Jimmy Santiago Baca and...