cover image Man Living on a Side Creek: And Other Poems

Man Living on a Side Creek: And Other Poems

Stephan Torre. New York University Press, $25 (96pp) ISBN 978-0-8147-8207-1

Torre has developed a language of myth to address human experience in the great wild places of Alaska and the West. In his first book, he leads us ``out to the sheds / where no language / is possible.'' In poem after poem, he speaks of the raven, ``hacking / in and out of the void,'' who ``wakes me up / pulling rusty spikes / out of a cold plank.'' In his best writing, Torre finds expressions of bold simplicity. For example, in ``Coming Home'' his truck quits in the cold of winter: ``The clear dark / took my brain / with one bite.'' The language sometimes detracts from the strength of the poems when certain words emerge repeatedly: ``fist,'' ``numb,'' ``furrow,'' ``ripple,'' ``root,'' ``blood.'' When this happens, the mood Torre creates feels literary, not grounded in the specifics of real life. But the ordinary need not be pushed to mythic heights to resonate, as he shows us in the book's long last poem, ``We Went out to Make Hay'': ``We went out with booms and spindles, harrows and seed drills / choppers and high carbon teeth / out with hammers and rivets / and cold meat sandwiches.'' In lines that recall Whitman, the men in the poem celebrate work and life. (May)