A Sacred Heart by Ron Watson, and: “Twin Peaks” Cherry Pie: New Poems by Robert Peters, and: Canyonvue by Scott Preston, and: 301 by Ford Swetnam

Abstract

Reviews 413 boy and his grandfather finally seek their tarpons, here where the battle loses all significance in light of the ultimate death of both predator and prey. The Death of Tarpons is a story of innocence moving through a brutal world, a story told with a narrative voice so sincere in its attempt to make sense of a mean and random world that we can’t help but share in the journey toward a life of love, compassion, and wonder. JANE BRADLEY University of Toledo A Sacred Heart. By Ron Watson. (Pocatello, Idaho: The Redneck Press, American Poetry at the Millennium Series Number 5, 1994. 12 pages, $6.00.) “Twin Peaks” Cherry Pie: New Poems. By Robert Peters. (Pocatello, Idaho: The Redneck Press, American Poetry at the Millennium Series Number 6, 1995. 12 pages, $6.00.) Canyonvue. By Scott Preston. (Pocatello, Idaho: The Redneck Press, American Poetry at the Millennium Series Number 7, 1995. 12 pages, $6.00.) 301. By Ford Swetnam. (Pocatello, Idaho: The Redneck Press, American Poetry at the Millennium Series Number 8, 1995. 12 pages, $6.00.) Four recent chapbooks from the Redneck Press vary consider­ ably in quality, but all testify to the vitality of a uniquely western American poetry at the end of our century. Ron Watson’s A Sacred Heart, a tame book, is a cycle of love poems with all the cliched ups and downs typical of poems in an exaggerated courtly love tradition—or maybe in a subdued Harlequin romance tradition. Watson’s forte is the intensely person­ al image, never shying short of sentimentality: “i . . . search the wall for words/ to give this moment birth—/ i want a phrase immortal enough/ to swim in forever.” Once past this obligatory eternizing 414 Western American Literature conceit, though, we get to the real essence of the love poem: “i hear you drawing water for a bath,/ your voice soft with janis/ as she coos a slow one, smooth/ as southern comfort.” If Watson would drop the tired freshman tactic of using all lower case personal pronouns, though, he might strengthen an otherwise delicate poetic voice. America’s favorite curmudgeon of poetry, Robert Peters—chief blue ribbon judge of the Great Poetry Bake-Off series, whose famous prose style captures the essence of the best poetic styles of our time, in this new chapbook shows us his poetry is almost as good as his prose. This volume is a fast-paced verbal video of contempo­ rary western life—Nevada, Indian cemeteries, skateboarding, and second-hand celebrity. Some poems are loud, raunchy, and frenetic with activity—with the excitement of Nevada casinos: “Silver dol­ lars clang/ Cherries, plums, and lemons/ whip past: clunk, and stop./ $240 is my limit.” A quiet poem, but no less the verbal video version of a PTV (Poetry Television) video is “Indian Burial Ground” where “Hares bound and skitter/ through creosote brush and lupine./ Bleached name-hieroglyphics, an old woman’s/ plastic flowers. Rodent bones. Massed clouds./ Spinning hawks. Rocks and boul­ ders.” Three thumbs up for these poems, new poems that are raucus, primitive, and raw as the new West itself. Scott Preston, one of the foremost scholars of cowboy poetry, in Canyonvue delves into the “intensely personal realms of madness” as he confronts Idaho’s “evil mental health codes” in a volume devoted to poetic experiences at Canyon View Hospital. In his end­ note Preston claims that “Idaho’s reputation as the most Neanderthal state in the union gets one wacky boost” with these poems. Well, while competent poetry in a most deeply personal way, Canyonvue is hardly “wacky”— thank goodness. Instead, here are poems of bit­ terness and mental anguish, poems of rage against an insane system: “The State arrives/ with a lamp &/ a pleasant expression/ perfectly primed/ to bleach another month/ of my life away.” Preston is at his best, by far, in character portraits such as that of “the little chi­ huahua woman” who has “a voice that could drive a cartoon insane” or the Director of Nursing who “was bitter/ as chewed aspirin/ and almost as attractive.” Here is terrific black humor—but it is hardly “wacky.” Reviews 415 Ford Swetnam is a prominent...