The Wichita Poems by Michael Van Walleghen

Abstract

182 Western American Literature Federal agencies and their jurisdictions of environmental control plus major Federal environmental laws and amendments. The state land-use laws sec­ tion is the least developed of the three. The characters in Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang did not follow the 23 steps to power advocated by the primer, nor did they stay within the law. The Grass Roots Primer is a more reliable route for grass roots activism. MARY ELLEN ACKERMAN Death Valley National Monument The Wichita Poems. By Michael Van Walleghen. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975. 46 pages, $6.95.) Michael Van Walleghen is a controlled, highly skilled poetic craftsman. These are well-made poems that sustain a quiet, sophisticatedly simple tone with short, spare lines in which every word is carefully selected and placed exactly where it has to be: “On a cloudy day on a day the clouds the lake the late small sun seem stopped and the gray birds dive like stones . . Not all of the poems are as overtly shaped to the devices of language as these opening lines of “The Light,” but the same exacting precision is found throughout this volume. The book is worth the reading if only to see this display of workmanship in the short line and the exact word. But of course there is more. The tight control is often used neatly to pull the reader into a par­ ticular vision of an experience and then reverse the roles quietly so that the reader almost unaware becomes the object as well as the subject. In “On Seeing the Abominable Snowman at the 1968 Kansas State Fair,” for example, we begin with the crowds of people who “file by / whispering and pointing / but for the most part serious / like proper distant cousins,” looking at what is supposed to be an abominable snowman in a cake of ice. Then we follow the same people to their own neighborhoods, with a hint of their concern at “footsteps, past midnight / creaking in the snow” or a hinted reflection in the window. Before we know it we are driving through Wichita in the snow at night and have become, not the people, but the outsider, and in another line, the snowman himself. These reversals lead to a shock of recognition of unsuspected dualities of self. It is the kind of revelation by indirection that a good poem achieves perhaps more directly and economically than any other art form. Reviews 183 Only a very few of these poems are “Wichita” poems in the sense of necessarily growing out of the experience of a particular place or region. Most of them could come from almost anywhere in America and do not evoke a special part of the country. “Prairie Madness,” with its sea of grass and “constant wind” is a notable exception, but there are not many others. Indeed some come from no place at all except perhaps one person’s own private hell, as in “The Tennis Match.” Although there is an abundance of somber wit in these poems, there is little humor and little affirmation. Many of them deal deftly and matter of factly with horror, a personal horror that is evoked in the calmest of voices and tones. The tone can occasionally verge on paranoia, as in “Looking Back” : Looking back, it seems to you it was always winter where you stood . . . was it only you who stood there, listening . . . some great elephant seal they’d caught . . . But this suspicion of a faceless “they” is usually controlled, and the horror then becomes only that of the human predicament fully realized. Even so, herein lies the only disappointment in this volume, what seems to be a very limited range of expression, relieved only by the affirma­ tion of a single poem, “The Moon Kites.” Even there the affirmation is found only in one who is “sick / and altogether weary.” Even suppressed horror can finally grow monotonous or begin to appear an affectation. Perhaps other of Mr. Van Walleghen’s poems will broaden this vision of human experience and bring his considerable technical skill to bear on a broader emotional range. PAUL T. BRYANT, Colorado State University Steinbeck...