CLIMBING INTO THE ROOTS

by Reg Saner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 1975

Anyone who knows the Rocky Mountain States will agree with Peg Saner that this is God's country, created with one apparent purpose in mind: camping out under the big sky. And maybe, as a secondary activity, writing poems about it. Saner packs a Kodak as well as a pen on his hikes to Monument Forest, Isolation Peak, Bighorn Flats or Glacier Gorge because it's hard to resist nature's ""Calendar art/ at the edge of winter,/ this aspen fire/ too gorgeously banal to shoot."" The view from the poems does justice to the landscape by understating the splendor--providing quick, glinting images in the contemporary idiom. ""April Dawn Snow"" explains Saner's technique: he pares all the adjectives in order to make the ""incredible"" beauty around him more ""believable."" Recreating his emotions by restraining them seems to genuinely challenge him. The tension between the grandeur of his subject and Saner's scrupulously minimal style energizes this poetry and brings the reader inside. This collection won the first Walt Whitman Prize for a previously unpublished poet, which is administered by The American Academy of Poets.

Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1975

Categories: NONFICTION