Customer Reviews

Bitter Creek Junction (Poetry of the American West)

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The acclaimed poet and critic Randall Jarrell must have had Linda Hasselstrom in mind when he described a good poet as "...someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times." If you have read previous works by Hasselstrom you will readily recognize what Jarrell meant. If you have not had that opportunity, you are in luck. This latest effort is your chance to stand in the eye of a thunderstorm and smell the rain, hear the thunder, and experience the brilliant light of pure talent up close and personal. Bitter Creek Junction is the author's fourth volume of poetry and it is a keeper. She writes from, and out, of her western experience but manages to relate such experiences in a manner that has universal meaning and appeal. While I did not grow up in the new or old west and have never experienced ranching, Hasselstrom's narrative poems dealing with her personal experiences in such venues, touch me in familiar ways. But don't be misled. These are not touchy-feely, sugar and spice poems. They are gritty, haunting, powerful, no-nonsense, straight-talking stories of everyday life and living. They are also hopeful, poignant, sensual and, in short, a recognition of the stuff that everyday life demands of each of us. The trick is in the way we handle such events. She writes tellingly about "the stranger Death..." both in memory of her husband; in the story of a cowhand that was the subject of an obituary sent her by a friend; and the death of a friend thirty years ago. The references to a daughter never realized will give you pause. The stories of ranch life, the lives of mothers and grandmothers, and a poem with the advice "Slow grinding-a good technique for any job," will leave you with a longing for more lightning strikes. The title poem, about a mother and her daughter and the non-western cowboy myth of domestic abuse, will leave you with a sense of the landscape and environment Hasselstrom knows so well. I suspect you will long remember this powerful and stirring poem. Randall Jarrell would be proud of Linda Hasselstrom.This is a wonderful collection of life's experiences by a poet that ranks among the best.

Hasselstrom's poetry is simply written, easily understood and compelling, but don't let that fool you, her subjects and thinking are complex. This author of both essays and poetry confronts and defines the toughest of life's problems including the death of those we love or hate. My favorite poems are those about accepting and making peace with the ghosts who visit us from time to time. Women with women friends will cherish it.