cover image The 18,000-Ton Olympic Dream: Poems

The 18,000-Ton Olympic Dream: Poems

T. R. Hummer. Quill, $18.95 (96pp) ISBN 978-0-688-09018-0

Hummer ( The Angelic Orders) weaves together a range of familiar themes into a distinctive, original collection concerned with the recurring cycles of birth and death, sexuality, and political consciousness and conscience. These poems are deeply rooted in American soil as Hummer mines various geographical landscapes--from the artificial ``open acreage'' of Ohio to the ``pseudo-snowscape'' of Utah's salt flats--to express his disillusionment with ``the indiscriminate air of our native country, / Where, yes, the hardworking succeed / In working hard.'' For the poet, a stark and barren natural realm serves as a projection of a correspondingly bleak modern condition: ``The air will go on tincturing / The trees, and the spaces between the trees . . . / with the colorlessness / Of this present that chokes what believes it ought to be.'' Hummer is sometimes given to superfluities of language and a rambling narrative style, but his startling imagery and lyrical descriptions more than compensate for these flaws. Of note is the overly long but ambitious narrative, Bluegrass Wasteland , in the book's final section. (May)