\s mYevtew ELECTRONIC ADDITION - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWskitters after the surfleaping aside when a breaker falls,nervousbut perfectly focussed into his worksoundlesslyweightlessly darting his needle beakquick and busyas though the rest of the worlddid not existStories crop up frequently. These are"genuine" stories, such as any visitormight expect to hear, and Steffler is sogood at capturing the flavour of the localspeech and the hardships of the tellers'lives that it is hard to believe the storiesare entirely invented. Even when thenarrator's imagination starts to play alarger part in the tales, the voice remainsthe same and the line between imaginationand reality is subtly but effectivelyblurred, especially in the recountings of"madman" Carm Denny, the islands' lastinhabitant, removed to a mainland asylumbefore the narrator's arrival.Steffler explores the relationship between,and reciprocal influence of, physicalspace and human psyche. The narratorinitially thinks Carm Denny is still onthe island:A madman is living alone out there. Theone inhabitant left. Holding out in theruined town. Holding the whole island inhis head. Thinking it into reality, everystick, every bird. And god knows what else.Through the stories told by the localsSteffler introduces the existence of ghostsof some of the original islanders. Ghostsare perfect embodiments of man as natureand nature as man, neither whollyone nor the other. The expectation ofsupernatural encounters imparts a wonderfultension which Steffler handles skilfully,letting us expect but deferringpayment. Near the end of the book thenarrator moves into Denny's abandonedcabin, cranking the tension up anotherfew turns :I decided to move into Garm's cabin yesterday. . . It's like standing inside the head ofsomeone who knows the place.Steffler handles his material like aprose writer, shunning wordplay infavour of a straightforward relating ofdetail. Some may find the language ofthe poems unremarkable in itself (youcertainly can not say that about thestories) but Steffler knows what he isabout, taking aim and writing with absolutediscipline to attain that aim. For allhis care and discipline, and despite theadmittedly restricted use of language,Steffler has charted in The Grey Islandsa rich, elaborate personal odyssey. Watchfor him in the future.ECLECTICISMANDREW BROOKSJAN FIGURSKI, The Stevensdaughter Poems.Third Eye, $6.00.jiM SMITH, One Hundred Most FrighteningThings, blewointment, n.p.ROBERT EADY, The Blame Business. Ouroboros,$6.95.MICHAEL BULLOCK, The Man With FlowersThrough His Hands. Melmoth/Third Eye,$7.50.JOE DAVID BELLAMY, ed., American PoetryObserved. Univ. Illinois Press, n.p.ONE VALUABLE DEVELOPMENT in recentCanadian poetry is the long sequencedealing with a real or invented character—• The Piaf Poems, Lampman's Kate;The Journals of Susanna Moodie is perhapsthe archetype. Jan Figurski's typicallynamed book, The StevensdaughterPoems, deals with a fictional Polish immigrant,Stephany, who suffers throughWorld War II and a displaced persons'camp before coming to Canada. Whilethe book contains some good poems, it istoo thin in development to be satisfying.Figurski is trying to recapture some ofthe possibilities of narrative and characterizationthat poetry abdicated to prose177