On the North Slope

On the North Slope, Catharine Savage Brosman's ninth collection of poetry, displays once more the impressive range of her artistry and her powerful poetic vision. Divided into four parts, the volume includes free verse, blank verse, and rhymed quatrains. Taken together, the poems impart the very feeling of consciousness and illuminate both its potentialities and its burdens as it relates to the world. After the introductory poem, the first part, ""A Commonwealth of Place,"" features the winds, snow, light, and sunset of a Colorado winter. Following poems combine elements of personal and historical experience with mountain and desert scenes, which illustrate the subtle bonds between such experiences and their natural and cultural settings. ""Order Under the Sun"" comprises eighteen lyrics, mostly rhymed, dealing with flowers, birds, trees, and-one of Brosman's specialities foodstuffs, including carrots, honey, and garlic. The tone of these lyrics, which focus on the human meaning of such natural objects, ranges from humorous to grave. ""The Scripted Fate"" brings together narrative and lyric poems treating the poet's girlhood, in addition to such topics as failure and unhappiness, dying, and friendship and love, ending with an affirmation of married happiness. The final part, ""Themes for the Muses,"" features creative artists-Rodin, Donizetti, Liszt, and Yeats, among others-and performers. The poems emphasise creative work but even more the often dramatic dimensions of artists' lives and the implications of artistic vision. Readers of Brosman's new collection will find a generous spectrum of responses to experience, both light and dark, in poems of great verbal and visual appeal.