-*, evtews^L The Trwrfi AfaoMf Small Towns by.David Baker University ofArkansas Press, 1998, 79 pp., $15 (paper) "I don't want a song to make it all better/I don't want a home/to go home to," David Baker says in "CaUed Back," the first poem of this, his fifth book. In the thoughtful lyrics and understated narratives that follow, nothing does "make it aU better," nor are we given the sense that the kind of small-town home Baker writes about can continue to exist except as Baker has preserved it for us in the fine language of this quiet coUection. These poems expertly make the rounds of smaU-town Ufe. They speak of the fields, the trains, the "card shoppe," the movie theater's "blue velvet, dark aisles," the "new trees planted to beautify the block"—and, of course, the gossip so essential to parochial sensibility. Throughout the book, but perhaps most acutely in the title poem, Baker is intent on documenting the passing of a weU-loved way of Ufe. The opening poem, which begins with the line "It never stops raining" and ends "It never rains," hints at the ambivalence and contradiction Baker sees as typical of smaU towns. He navigates this world with moods ranging from the astringent to the sincere. Baker's frustration with the inadequacy of language as a tool for preservation comes through substantiaUy in several of the best poems. In "Top of the Stove," a narrative snapshot of a mother and chüd in a kitchen, the speaker observes, "Now they've gone. Language remains." The loss of the chUd's parents, pronounced in that single line, makes the persistence of words a cold comfort. "The Facts" teUs of a deer crashing through a plateglass window. After the neighbors have gathered to see "the wüd skin punctured . . . the brown leg pumping /a piston of want, muscle, bone," Baker writes, "we heard the train puU/away in the night,/and the animal /blood spread. Who knows why." It's not only grief and violence that defy explanation in these poems but unreasoning tenderness as weU. "The Kiss" conflates two camping trips, one from the speaker's chUdhood , one from the present moment, leaving him "waiting in the humming dark" for an unidentified someone "to kiss me once to sleep." Three 168 · The Missouri Review love poems, "The Third Person," "The First Person," and "The Second Person," appear in that order, interspersed among the other pieces. Their common imagery of fire, smoke and sun provides a metaphor for aU that burns bright and for all that burns out ,and it testifies to the elemental truth of Ufe and loss. In these three carefuUy crafted poems— as in the others in David Baker's new book—we are reminded that our power to hold what we love is limited . (MB) For Kings and Planets by Ethan Canin Random House, 1998, 335 pp., $24.95 Marshall Emerson is the gifted, charismatic but unsteady son of professor parents. Orno Tardier, a setfproclaimed hayseed from Cook's Grange, Missouri, meets Marshall on his first day at Columbia University. The young men, who each view the other's world as exotic, become instant friends. Ethan Canin's new novel, For Kings and Planets, foUows their turbulent relationship from coUege weU into their professional careers as "O," the sturdy, reliable one, assumes the "chores of a tradesman" and becomes a small-town Maine dentist whUe "M," who aspires to write the great American novel, succeeds as a sUck HoUywood producer instead. The strength of the young men's friendship is chaUenged when Orno faUs for MarshaU's seemingly sweet, uncompUcated younger sister, Simone. The relationship gains him further entry into the academic famUy he adulates. The Emerson/Pelham clan members are aU charming and accomplished , but one senses that something sinister lurks beneath the sophisticated veneer. Like Dr. Emerson , with whom he's engaged in an ongoing battle, a "fight to the death," Marshall has an eidetic memory, a penchant for seU-invention and a flair for violence. His mother, Mrs. Pelham, despite being a respected anthropologist, caters to herhusband's needs and fails to protect...