North Book by Jim Green

Abstract

330 Western American Literature North Book. Poems by Jim Green. Illustrations by Nauya. (Blackfish Press, 1851 Moore Avenue, Burnaby, British Columbia. $4.95.) North Book expresses a poetry of economy. Jim Green knows that words in the Northwest Territory come in quick breaths, and that there’s power in brevity. His poems have a hard, primitive ring to them if only because he has dispensed with most articles, subjects which can be implied, and punctuation, to draw out forceful verbs and images. Through the use of short lines and stanzas, primary syntactical relationships become clear. Elaborate verbage is minimized, leaving a tone reminiscent of John Haines’ Stone Harp or Gary Snyder’s Riprap. The glyphs by Nauya sprinkled through the book reinforce this aesthetic. Economy appears, quite successfully, as the theme of several of the poems. “They Had Been Five Days” and “Every Day” relate the tough, crazy values regarding time and money held by Arctic natives confronted with modernization. Many of the poems contrast the old ways in the Far North — fishing, hunting, scraping, waiting — with the discontinuities so blaringly evident when Northern Development enters the picture. By neces­ sity then, the book includes lamentations, black humor, political anger, and nostalgia. Though land conservation is suggested, conservation of a tradi­ tional way of life is the core concern. Problems arise, however, when outsider Jim Green attempts to emulate the native’s daily thought, or convince us of the destruction which is occurring North of temperate America. Poems such as “Welfare Man” and “Dialogue North” use the vernacular in a contrived way, and even lack depth as moral statements. In “CHB 548” and “How to Do It,” Green’s writing is little more than cute. The poems which have the most durable feel to them take a phenom­ enological tact: their strength is in the placement of stark images against one another. “We Slit the Last” and “Half Dance” cinemagraphically evoke events through a concentration on physical details. The dozen shades of gray seen “From the Tent Flap” bring to mind Edmund Carpenter’s essay in Eskimo (University of Toronto, 1959) on the tactile sense of space of Arctic natives. The poet makes a perceptive ethnographer. The flaws in North Book recapitulate a problem basic to much Western Literature: how does a poet call up “The Old World” of the continent without his own modern voice acting as an interference or an intrusion? Jim Green has not overcome this problem, yet it may be that his humor (about it) pulls him through; “Being from the wrong side / of the tracks / the continent / I had no way of knowing / How to split up the kill / twenty caribou / four hundred mouths / So nearly caused a riot. . . In a postface essay, Green notes that such mistakes allowed him to meet “people who were willing to help me because they could see I needed it. . . . Nothing worthy of writing a Man’s Magazine epic about.” While Reviews 331 “failing” to give us another wilderness epic, Green has presented us with a book of scrappy little poems, capturing enough of humanity-in-the-elements to make it worthwhile. GARY PAUL NABHAN, Tucson, Arizona White Logic: Jack London’s Short Stories. By James I. McClintock. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wolf House Books, 1975 xii + 206 pages, $10.00 hard­ bound.) Hi-yu skookum! Here is a fine critical source for anyone who has ever taught or ever plans to teach the philosophical ideas underlying Jack London’s short stories. For once we have commentary on something besides Call of the Wild and “To Build a Fire,” and it is insightful commentary, salted with 308 footnotes and an excellent bibliography. Of special interest is the opening chapter, which traces the artistic evolution of the modern short story form, from London’s essay-exemplum introduction and intrusive moralizing narrator, to the frame story which embodies a tale within a tale, to the streamlined story of dramatic action. In subsequent chapters the reader is treated to a discussion of contemporaries who influenced London’s thought — notably Herbert Spencer, Rudyard Kipling, and Carl Jung. An unmistakable highlight is the chapter on the Malemute Kid, whom McClintock calls “the true priest of...