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‘Glazed iced eyes, -
too cold and sticky _ a

for my maggot army to liberate . . .
Just hanging around till spring,
the scabs make (good eggs). . .
foxes and coyotes

and flightless birds housing

in your cage... .’

A journalist can find too many northern B.C.
stories end like this. A reader can also question
the standard of toughness that calls on a person
to just ‘move on’ from such horror:

‘It was the woods that would label me,
not the hard men that never cried,
and would never let me.’

In this chapbook, reflecting White's
experience working in Northern mills, industrial
processes find poetic expression, recalling the
work of Stephen Spender. Small creatures are
inevitably caught up in them, both literally and
metaphorically:

‘A beautiful day for rounds,

staring into the washers

which spin whistling song birds

with lung damage into a thick

brown pulp

‘strong birds,’ | think., ‘tortured, but strong.”

And larger creatures are also drawn in and
destroyed:

‘deer . . ./drink from the lime ponds
while their fur erupts like

a drunk camper’s unattended stew,
sending smoke signals

into the whooshing screech
of red effluent skies

Strolling workmen will find

their bones come spring. .. .’

by : Paul Strickland

‘Blue Horse Pill’ is something to which older
readers can relate, but also expresses hope about
the human spirit and the concept of elan vital:

‘Another trip to the doctor is done.

There is a slight possibility

that | have developed

a good ol’ case of the shingles. . .

| have developed the body of an old man,
and the head of an Andronicus. . .

I’m still here to dance.’

White is pessimistic about the future of
what's left of intellectual and artistic freedom in
northern B.C. -- indeed in all of North America.
The legacy of the Beatniks of the 1950s has
turned out not to be liberty of expression but a
stale ideological conformity. In the first poem in
the chapbook, ‘Justice,’ he raises the question of
the return of Bolsheviks to northern climes. These
would not be the actual Bolsheviks of 1917-24,
the ones who caused the murder and starvation of
millions in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and who
in turn were put on trial and murdered by Stalin in
the late 1930s.

Rather they are people of intellectual
influence who have a Bolshevik sensibility --
those who think they have the only approach to
helping the oppressed and who seek to silence
anyone who disagrees with them, whether through
ostracism or frivolous, maliciously trumped-up
complaints/

“The critics cannot withstand the criticism. . . ,”
White says in ‘The Separation of North and State.’

In this connection one becomes especially
concerned about political phenomena like the
“Check your privilege” movement, which enjoins
all potential critics to “shut the f--- up!” If this kind
of thing goes very far, we might see, in a way, the
resurrection of actual Bolsheviks.

One looks forward to White’s next chapbook
and more of his realistic representations of life in
the North.

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