шш in review DISCOURSE OF THE OTHER - University of British ...

BOOKS IN REVIEWfantasy, and native lore. Like most stylesand spells, these worked at some timesand not at others. Set next to the presentvolume, Songs of the Sea Witch ( 1970)looks obscure and overly dependent onsnake-slime, while Grave-Dirt and SelectedStrawberries (1973) invokes apower of Haida material — at its worsta kind of easy shlik — without managingto transmute it into poetry. Yet Entranceof the Celebrant (1972) is clearly thework of a genuine talent, at least in"Birthstone" and "Dog Star," which aremade of typical under-thirty Musgravematerials: night, spirits, dreams, anddeath. "Facing Moons" introduced the"moon of constant sleep inside / sleep,moon that I am," which rarely sets forher.These preoccupations culminate inThe Impstone (1976). "I was born with/ witch-power and / two wings," shewrites: "Somebody cut them off" ("AllWill Fall") ; "The old frog-moon / laysher eggs in my heart," says the personaof the fine "Mourning Song." Otherwise,though, sorcery does not correlate highlywith equality, which is found instead inhumane and intelligible work like "OGrave Where Is Thy Victory" andthe beautiful "Chiaroscuro." A Man toMarry, A Man to Bury (1979) is a similarmélange: Musgrave often writes ofdreams and moons, but only "Woodcutter,River-God and I" turns magical subjectinto magical artifact, while "A CuriousCenturion" and the strong, cold"Fishing on a Snowy Evening" succeedwithout recourse to the preternatural.Here she breaks through the type-castingand finds a second voice.In the present collection, the moonwitchof the western isles still dreams,but generally that mode is less importantnow; Musgrave continues to broaden herappeal. The first section, for example,"Coming Into Town, Cold," documentsthe Canadian encounter with Latin, especiallysouthern cultures. Here — andto some extent elsewhere in the volume— the crucial polarity is not nature/supernature but self/other, and I wouldargue that the most patently autobiographicalpoems — or even parts of poems— are the least successful. The section'stitle-poem and "Supposing YouHave Nowhere to Go" are particularlylimited by chit-chat about the poet's age,financial problems, and low opinion ofMiami; they are lineated journal entries.(Of the eight poems that I wish shehad withheld, five are lessened by thiskind of self-indulgence.) On the otherhand, where she submerges herself inthe human condition, as in "Hunchbackon the Buga Road," "Ordinary People,"and "The Unconsidered Life," she is apoet.I am the bride withworms around her heartand a skull bursting with goodnesslike a church goblet.This is not the "I" of "I'm over twentynine."These are three of the nine poems (inthis collection of five or six dozen) thatI would use to convince anyone of Musgrave'stalent. Three more are "rollovers"from Tarts and Muggers (thefour "timely" Queen Charlotte Islandpoems all appeared there), so there is nopoint in discussing them here. The lastthree touchstones are the title-piece andtwo poems in the final section. "Cocktailsat the Mausoleum" is both a typicallywacky piece of Musgrave fantasyand her Ode to Melancholy; cocktailstaste better at the mausoleum, but deathstares from the bottom of the glass.I decided long agothat death was not serious, but nowwith a jewelled hand something tugged,and I felt the cold earthrising to meet me.Finally, when "you"(a late entry)187