The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.2004, Síða 41

Vol. 59 #1
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
39
Book Reviews
White Flashes
on Charcoal
Poems bv
Fred D. Anderson
White Flashes on Charcoal
By Fred D. Anderson
Reviewed by W.D. Valgardson
ISBN: 0-9736071-0-6
$15.00
White Flashes on Charcoal is Fred D.
Anderson’s first book of poetry but, hope-
fully, not his last. First books are acts of
bravery for it is in them that the secret
inner world of the poet is revealed for all to
see. Fred takes on that challenge head first
for he not only writes about his love of the
Netley Marsh near Libau where he grew up
but also the tragic death of his father by
suicide.
The white flashes of charcoal of the
title are revealed in the first poem “renew-
al” to be pelicans which “arrive/just before
dusk deepens to night/over the thirsting
prairie”. The strength of those lines with
the surprising “thirsting prairie” prepare
the reader for poems like “Morning View
from Bale House” that include images such
as the following:
buckbrush and wolf willows bend low
wiry branches lie back
ike the ears of horses
annoyed by the buffeting wind
There is something about a poet’s eye
and mind that see not only what most of us
see but observe what is beyond that. In
“Indigo Bunting Day” the speaker says
It’s an indigo bunting day
Now, late in the lingering fall
A few fragments of summer cling
To clematis on latticed wall
Having read those lines I will now see
days differently. When I return from
Manitoba to Victoria, I will watch for the
appearance of various flocks of birds and
think not only of the poet and his poem but
will rename the days.
One of the requirements of a poem is
that it earn its last lines. Those lines have to
be prepared for, through an accumulation
of detail that creates a second level of
understanding. In “two pennies” Fred does
just that. Taking the most mundane of
details—a hair band, a worn cushion, two
pennies, a toothpick, pretzel bits, a but-
ton—he moves toward a moment of sad-
ness that all readers can empathize with
when he says that “for two cents/I’d
call/and say hi/speak breezily/to blow
the/dust from the tracks you/left behind/.
In the section “Reflections in my mir-
ror” the poet reveals his empathy for those
who are marginalized in our society. In
“Bonnie” it is a woman wasted by radiation
therapy. In “Alley Cat” it is “Back Alley
Simon/blinded by Lysol”.
In section five, “Marshland