Review by Booklist Review
In The Meadow (1992), Galvin wrote about the demanding beauty of Wyoming in a powerful and laconic prose narrative. Now he has returned to poetry, his first literary love, and each of his poems glows like a campfire in the wild. Galvin's poems are extremely active and alive, both in terms of their philosophical bent and their images of an ever-wakeful natural world. There is something of Dickinson in his clarity, wit, reined-in passion, and ability to render abstract thought into concrete objects and actions, but there is also a wildness derived from the sky, rock, prairie, wind, and snow of Wyoming. Here are fields of grass, oceans of clouds, sighing pine trees that "get everything they pray for." As avidly visual as Galvin is, he is also permeated by a sense of the world's sacredness, of our tiny part in the work of the earth. This leads to wonder and wry humor: "The universe has everything. / That's what I like about it." What we like about Galvin's perspicacious poems are their grace, strength, and quiet passion. --Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Prominent chronicler of the West, Galvin (Elements) again employs a spare style to depict the tough landscapes of his Wyoming home and his unsentimental affection for the people who live there. No ``cowboy poet,'' Galvin refuses to romanticize the West: ``The wind, when it finds me, bears no trace/ Of sage-sweet horse smell, no color black,/ No softness of muzzle of the/ Mare, her mane curving and lifting,/ Where she graces the horizon down to nothing.'' The consistent, tough-minded sensibility (which also marked his 1992 novel, The Meadow) of these poems is lit by flashes of humor (``Statistics show that/ One in every five/ Women/ Is essential to my survival''). The real surprise of this volume is ``The Sacral Dreams of Ramon Fernandez,'' an imaginative speculation about the life of a real-life European critic mentioned in Wallace Stevens's ``The Idea of Order at Key West.'' Stripped of the familiar wilderness locales, Galvin's ability to summon up another's inner world takes center stage. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Galvin has created a certain robust mystique about himself-if the biography matters-and these poems reflect certain qualities of robust labor. The poems show all their work, some having a finished presence, others having been worked to death. Occasionally, this results in delightful strangeness-"The Mind assumes The Position/Under a cocaine moon"-but all too often there is dull predictability: "There is no word in English for the gap/Between the look of lightning and its clap." It's as though Galvin's ears are still ringing from the chainsaw and he can't hear his own voice. Libraries may do better with his earlier books (e.g., Elements, Copper Canyon Pr., 1988) or his prose narrative The Meadow (Holt, 1992). Not recommended.-Steven R. Ellis, Brooklyn P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
