Reviews 235 the ingredients in a stew, the essays do not blend to produce an excellent product that is somehow more than the sum of its parts. The separate essays remain distinct. And it is good they do; otherwise, the reader might lose sight of the really good ones. 'k.ICHARD TUERK East Texas State University Here’s to High Heels. By Patricia Elliott. (Big Timber, Montana: Seven Buffaloes Press, 1986. 67 pages, $6.75 paper.) Canadian poet Patricia Elliott died on August 5th, 1977. She was sixty years old. Born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, she held a degree in music, did paintings in various media and wrote poetry. She experimented extensively in combining the three arts. In 1977, the Canadian Council awarded her a grant to pursue a project in this kind of experimentation. Unfortunately, bone cancer claimed her life before the project could be completed. Art Cuelho, who published some of Elliott’s poems in his magazine Black Jack, selected the poems included in this volume. He says there are enough poems remaining in her complete works for two more collections. If this be the case, let’s hope someone will issue them soon. Elliott was an arresting poet, tied to memories of the Depression and its effect on Wetern Canada, and to memories of drought and Russian thistles blooming in the wasteland. “The Great Depression / created a caste system / among close relatives / never stated / but always felt,” she avers in a poem entitled “which Had Known Rain.” Elliott knew deprivation, but retained a sense of community. Later in the same poem she writes: “But our closest relatives / one section to the south / thereby closest to the Sand Hills / they had all our problems / we shared the worst / no rain so no seed so no feed. . . .” Nothing happens in iso lation, and her depiction of rural life is not of barren loneliness but of farm society and its humanity, along with its brightest and shabbiest traits. In graceful language she talks of goldfinches “in scalloping flight” and how “meadowlarks steady the horizon on black and yellow fence posts.” How ever, not all of Patricia Elliott’s poems are concerned with rural life and environment. She also wrote of art, music and the joy of life. The book is illustrated with the poet’s drawings and some poetic graphics. Art Cuelho is an adept editor, and his introduction is relevant and moving. He obviously wanted this book to do double-duty, to present Patricia Elliott’swork and pay homage to the poet. In this he has succeeded. J. WESLEY CLARK Galesville, Maryland ...