Notes From Custer by Jim Heyne

Abstract

Reviews 363 also reach out to the wider readership of non-specialists that Berger wishes to influence. Such an attempt from a discipline often disparaged over professorial coffee for addiction to jargon and carelessness of communication deserves applause. That the attempt would merit no higher than “B” if sub­ mitted as the work of an advanced composition student is regrettable, and may lead sympathizers with Berger’s ideas to wish he had crossed depart­ mental lines in search of a co-author for his literary modules. The sketches are telling in substance, but lack the narrative movement, characterization, authentic dialogue, transitions, and related progression from story to story that together might have rendered them artistic. One trouble with us litterateurs, of course, is that our love of Beauty sometimes leads us to undervalue unartistic Truth. Our tolerances are tested further by any attempt to bring even worthy literature into the service of even an admirable cause. Pyramids of Sacrifice bears both stigmata, major handicaps to literary acceptance. If WAL is not permitted in-depth consideration of Berger’s kind of truth, however, it might at least enter with its artistic regrets this caveat: the undoubted literary lacks of this effort may be less important ultimately to mankind than are its bold new perspec­ tives on vital subjects. All of which, to recur to our introductory comments, raises serious questions about the judgment of that creative duo who pre-empted this space for these paragraphs. Or perhaps we should indict a trio, including one whose limited character has never yet permitted him to turn down either prominence in print or a free book. LEE NASH, George Fox College Notes From Custer. By Jim Heynen. (Ann Arbor: Bear Claw Press, 1976. 66 pages, $2.95.) Notes From Custer is a short book. Some of the “poems” are, in fact, notes or sketches, all of them short, sharp, and vivid. In this sense, they are to be distinguished from the vogue out-pouring of clumsy scrawl pop-editors have licensed as “prose poems.” Regardless, far too much is at stake in Heynen’s book to be quibbling about terms. The man’s a writer, and a good one. The book is divided into four sections, four being the sacred number of the traditional Sioux culture that made the Black Hills its home. Neverthe­ less, as the title of the volume suggests, the persona of the poems is White rather than Indian. While Heynen is fully aware of the powerful historic implications the Custer of his title carries for his reader, the Custer of the book refers first of all to place: a present day small town in South Dakota complete with service station, cafe, and parking meters. Only when the 364 Western American Literature poems reveal the particularity of their modern landscapes can they afford to take on the symbolic atmosphere with which they are so explosively charged. The result is an honest, informative probe into a contradictory world full of cruelty and changing beauty where two cultures remain utterly divided. The opening piece recalls Custer’s own assault on the Black Hills in 1876. The poem begins tamely enough with a high-spirited romp across “the open grasslands / where no man could hide / or want to.” Presumably, the poet is driving, moving casually and carefree across America The Beautiful. A “white jetstream overhead” streaks across the sky while a “meadow lark sings” outside the car window. However, the closer we get to the sacred Black Hills, the more conscious we become of the forces inhabiting them. At this point, Heynen’s carefully structured stanzas break down and merge, creating the rapid fire effect of a Gatling gun: MARINE LIFE AQUARIUM ENTRANCE PORPOISE SHELLS LIVE SHELLS SCUBA DIVING SEAL ACTS OPEN REPTILE GARDENS T RATE GIFTS HORSELESS CARRIAGE MUSEUM ANTIQUES OL D AND NEW CAVE ENTRANCE TOURISTS WELCOME BANKAMERI CARD HERE WILD WEST GATE 2 CAMPGROUND ENTRANCE WE LCOME TO THE BLACK HILLS OF SOUTH DAKOTA SIOUX IND IAN POTTERY AND CRAFTS ORIGINAL INDIAN NEXT RIGHT STOP HERE We wake in a kind of hell where the poet finds himself “the only traveller / in a room of brown faces / on blue velvet, ceramic...