MAVERICK ZONE

These three narrative poems of the old American frontier are lusty tales of cow-punchers, gamblers, gunmen and whores by a biographer of the old West and many actual incidents and characters. This more creative reprise is less successful; the poetry is only mediocre; and in a verse epilogue- The American Gamut- a rather weak attempt is made to link the old frontier with the new frontier of interplanetary exploration. The parallel is difficult to sustain -- the new space-men are disciplined and highly trained characters, not just the jetsam of this earlier age-born under a wandering star. The market seems marginal- somewhere between the ballad and the Grade-B movie.