Herbert Krause by Arthur R. Huseboe, and: William Everson by Lee Bartlett, and: John Haines by Peter Wild, and: Sam Shepard by Vivian M. Patraka and Mark Siegel, and: Robert Cantwell by Merrill Lewis, and: Charles Sealsfield by Walter Grünzweig

Abstract

182 Western American Literature To this central vision, Carver brings a sharp eye for detail, relishing the com­ mon in life, finding in the smallest moment an insight that reveals larger truths. The poems wear the rhythms of everyday speech, but there isa marked lyricism that informs the poems, the kind of folk-jazz one associates with the piano skills of George Winston. Carver picks up a theme, drops it, picks it up again, elaborates on it, embellishes it, lets it drop again. The language in the poems has been pared to the bone, yet it remains graceful with a sure sense of the power of the free verse line. This collection demonstrates that Carver’s poetic skills are as refined as his fictional craft. RICHARD BEHM University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Herbert Krause. Boise State Western Writers Series, No. 66. By Arthur R. Huseboe. (Boise, Idaho: Boise State University, 1985. 50 pages, $2.00.) William Everson. Boise State Western Writers Series, No. 67. ByLee Bartlett. (Boise, Idaho: Boise State University, 1985. 50 pages, $2.00.) John Haines. Boise State Western Writers Series, No. 68. ByPeter Wild. (Boise, Idaho: Boise State University, 1985. 51 pages, $2.00.) Sam Shepard. Boise State Western Writers Series, No. 69. By Vivian M. Patraka and Mark Siegel. (Boise, Idaho: Boise State University, 1985. 49 pages, $2.00.) Robert Cantwell. Boise State Western Writers Series, No. 70. By Merrill Lewis. (Boise, Idaho: Boise State University, 1985. 54 pages, $2.00) Charles Sealsfield. Boise State Western Writers Series, No. 71. By Walter Grünzweig. (Boise, Idaho: Boise State University, 1985. 54 pages, $2.00.) Boise’s “Western Writers Series” continues to provide an invaluable service. Space limitations oblige me to be brutally brief in the following mini­ reviews. Arthur R. Huseboe combines biography, summary, and analysis in a lucid chronological account, to rescue Herbert Krause, versatile Minnesota-born writer, editor, teacher, and director of the Center for Western Studies at Augustana College, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, from neglect perhaps inevitable given his cramped early life. He aspired to be a Rolvaag-like depicter of his German-American region (dubbed “Pockerbrush”),with its unadjusted immi­ grants, harsh religion, and resentment against art. Huseboe praises Krause’s early fiction for its harsh verisimilitude, strongly-sketched characters, and poetic imagery; and comments well on Krause’s poetry, with its terse talk and country metaphors. Later works concern well-researched topics (steam thresher, ox-cart trail, Custer, and Crazy Horse)—with varying degrees of Reviews 183 success. Unable to support himself by fiction, Krause wrote about birds and taught in his native region (and also abroad). Huseboe’s partial reliance on outdated reviewers tellingly proves that his subject still suffers from a neglect now perhaps lessening. Lee Bartlett compactly relates the biography of chronically agonized William Everson (California-born lover of Pacific land- and seascapes, World War II conscientious objector jailed in Oregon, skilled printer, Dominican monk [Brother Antoninus for eighteen years], and vasectomized husband) to his phenomenal poetic production. Just as Bartlett counterpoints his subject’s life and works, so Everson has sought in his art to balance nature and man, disliked father/beloved mother, flesh/spirit, love/solitude, vine pruner/shaman , objective verse/subjective confession. Another balance is the merging of Everson/Antoninus’s Jungian animus/anima “into androgyny” likened to crucifixion elements. I would have recommended less concerning Everson’s four loves (including three wives), more quotation and analysis, and better documentation. A highlight isBartlett’suse ofhitherto unpublished interviews and letters. Peter Wild divides his hyper-subtle discussion of John Haines into a brief biographical sketch, stressing childhood, later reading, and love of Alaska; his “deep-image” poetry; his later, better efforts; and his prose (autobiog­ raphy, criticism of his works, and commentary on other American poets).Wild explicates eight of Haines’s most representative poems for well over a third of the total text. Much analysis is on-target negative: Haines’s early work is often flat, prosy, repetitious, formulaic, cloying, indecisive, and pat. But some of the later poems “struggle into territory beyond the deep-image mold” and are “original and satisfying” : in them Haines shares perceptions of others, avoids sentimentality, and makes emotions intrinsic...