Times Colonist from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada • 66

1 PACE FIFTEEN Gnomes: You must be willing to swallow the bait and suspend disbelief I have some good Dutch-Canadian friends to thank for introducing me to the work of Dutch artist Rien Poortvliet. Several months ago they loaned me his book about farm life in Holland, a book containing hundreds of line and wash drawings with captions in facsimile script. There was jio text because the marvellously exact drawings depicting every conceivable work and leisure activity on the farm and in the village were so explicit that a text would have been superfluous. Encouraged by my enthusiastic response, the same valued friends recently brought me Poortvliet's latest book before they had fully explored it themselves. This book was concerned with gnomes and in addition to captions it also had a fairly lengthy text by the artist's scientist friend Wil Huygen.

Unfortunately, it was in Dutch, a language almost totally incompehensible to me, so it left me frustrated. But now an English translation of this work has appeared and, at last, I can share my delight in Poortvliet with you. woodland gnomes and most of the book is devoted to them. According to my Dutch-Canadian friends these small Industrious beings spend their lives above ground and they are not too happy with Poortvliet for Inventing a complx underground existence resembling man's with elaborate homes, complete with sewers, bathrooms, portraits, and even cuckoo clocks. This, they complain, is anthropomorphizing to a ridiculous degree.

I cannot agree. When an artist like Poortvliet, with his delicious sense of humor, decides to allow his imagination to run riot, then anything goes and most people will be as intrigued by the domestic scene as they will enjoy being faintly shocked by the artist's occasion- al ribaldry. This is one of those rare books that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. Unfortunately, it just misses the classic category because the quality of the text falls short of that of the illustrations. Rien Poortvliet was inspired; Wil Huygen lacked the necessary child-like belief, like that possessed by Scandana-vian author Axel Munthe, who pitied people who had never seen a gnome.

Huygen's contribution ranges from descriptions of the gnome as craftsman to the writing of gnome legends. The former are couched in dull text-book style, and the latter lacks the inspirational touch that comes only with sincerity and which is essential when writing stories of this kind. However, don't allow that to put you off. Huygen's text' is a kind of bonus offering or dessert course. It's Poortvliet's book and in it he gives full rein to his talent for portraying anything and everything with scrupulous accuracy and, above all, with a communicative joyousness which may well be unique.

GSOMES, by Rien Poortvliet and Wil Huygen. Prentice-Ball. $17.95. occurs. It's in that spirit one should regard this book.

Actually, it's not difficult. When Poortvliet and Huygen inform us, with straight faces, that they have observed gnomes for 20 years and that theirs is the first work of consequence on the subject to be published since Wunder-lich's bulky and dubious treatise De Hominibus Parvisimis appeared in 1580, one is more than willing to swallow the bait and suspend disbelief. So, without further ado, let's do just that. This first documentary portrayal of gnomes immediately makes clear that gnomes, though resembling humans, are a distinct species, not to be confused with goblins, trolls, kobolds, fairies, elves and leprechauns, none of which of course exist in reality. Gnomes used to be accepted members of society in Europe, Russia and Siberia.

As benevolent allies of wild animals (and homo sapiens as well for. that matter) their frequent appearance was regarded as normal. Their disappearance coincided with the pollution of air and water and the destruction of virgin forests. With the current awareness of the need to maintain an ecological balance, there is hope that gnomes will emerge from the hidden above and below ground, to which they were forced to retreat. Concerned nature-lovers those who truly believe will undoubtedly meet gnomes.

And when they do It will probably be the wizened, ruddy-cheeked, grey- bearded males of the species who, according to Poortvliet, weigh less than one pound and stand six inches high, without their distinctive peaked red caps. Females are rarely seen because they seldom leave their homes. Gnomes live to a great age, 400 years being the average life-span. Physiologically, they are far superior to man. The eye is designed for sharp night vision, ear auricles can be pointed in any direction and revolved, sense of smell is 19 times more acute than man's, and their muscular system permits them to run faster, jump higher, and have seven times the strength of man, relatively speaking of course.

They also possess extrasensory perception. Poortvliet's full color pictures and captions describe in vivid detail every aspect of the gnome, from the fact that they always rub noses in greeting and farewell, that couples always have twin children, and that they can cure any ailment with medicinal herbs, to the routine nightly round of the male gnome as he gathers food and kindling, forages for animal hair for clothing, works in a gnome foundry or glasswork factory and of course assists animals in distress, such as disentangling a antlers from barbed wire. Although there are believed to- be isolated colonies of gnomes in Canada, it is Europe where they mostly exist, having a geographical range extending from western Ireland to Siberia and from Norway south to the Balkans and the Caucasus. Most common are the- The gnome book is enormous fun because Poortvliet has treated his subject as Audubon might have dealt with a new species of bird, portraying in great detail the appearance of both sexes, as well as the young, their chief characteristics, home-building techniques, habitat and movement patterns. The take-off of the scientific approach is so well done that even the most sophisticated reader will willingly allow himself to be tricked into believing the invented factual data.

Do you remember that charmingly dramatic scene in Peter Pan when the fairy Tinkerbelle is dying and Peter earnestly pleads with the audience to believe? "If you truly believe," he says, "she will live." When the audience roars its collective belief the miracle The Logger Poet Who Knows His Stuff By CHARLES LILLARD and work which has appeared in his three earlier collections, I felt that Trower really is "uneasily at peace." He has said a few things that have been on his mind for years, and said them very well. It will be interesting to see where he goes from here. Ragged Horizons is, no matter what direction Trower may take in the future, a very valid addition to anyone's library. If, as some claim, there is really a school of labor poetry in Canada, then Trower has set some high standards with this book. (1 The trouble with most logging poets is that they write about logging.

It's an occupational hazard. In the bush the logger talks about what he did in town. Back in town he talks logging. There's nothing new about this; I'm sure it's been this way ever since the first logs were driven down the rivers of Maine and New Brunswick. Talking about logging is habit-forming, as anyone who has worked in a camp will admit.

But there is a great difference between telling tall tales and the written word. Because so many writers have ignored this difference, this is the primary reason for so much bad log-" ging literature. The literary audience is not captive. They aren't waiting for someone to finish his story so they can tell their own. Robert Swanson was the first B.C.

logging poet to make this important transition, but few people today would bother to read his Ro bert Service-like ballads. They are too sentimental for contemporary tastes. Closer to our liking today is the work of Roderick Haig-Brown, who once logged, then wrote about it, before he went on to 'become known for other reasons. Now, somewhere be-tween Swanson and Haig-Brown, Peter Trower is carving a literary niche for himself. According to the blurb on the back of Trower's latest book, Ragged Horizons, he is "a poet of tough towns, mean streets, camps, docks, pubs, and the pull of beauty natural or human." This is one good reason for reading Trower, and it will certainly interest those young readers and writers -who see logging as the last he-man job in the world.

Another reason will be found in Al Purdy's Introduction to the book: "I've been a booster of Trower from that time on along with John Newlove and a few others also aware that here is a poet worth knowing a man keep up with Trower. Purdy never gets around to explaining what all of this has to do with Peter Trower's poetry. There are some very good reasons for reading Trower. His is an authentic voice. He knows what he is talking about; unlike many "working class poets" Trower is not a tenured professor in some university.

He was a logger, among other things, for some 30 years. And, while I'm doubful about some of the things that he glorifies, he is telling the truth and that's a rare commodity in the sanctified air of modern po-. etry. He knows what- he has seen, and he gives us the truth, as in "The Last "They're coming up the trail, big blueriver handscramped from decadesof tyrannical wooden handlesof gnawing the big ones downthe hard wayof hearing the undercut timber eryas it grudgingly gives." In "The Alders" he catches both a sense of desolation and the alder as "The alders are the reoccu-piersthey come easilyand quick into skinned landrising like an ambush on raked ridgesjabbing like whiskers up through the washed- outfaces of never-used roads." It is this type of writing which makes Trower outstanding. Sure, he's a poet of "mean streets," but he's continually rising above his subject matter.

At his best he becomes lyrical: "Be still love, the ghost moves in me again the whatever the itch without a name.It has woken like a foxin the dumb passagesto make me make music in the ashen time." Ragged Horizons is a curious mixture of macho-logger, who all too often seems to be riding on his uppers, and the almost devout lyricist forced into song by love or his surroundings. Throughout the book there is a sense that the author is paying homage to time: the good times, the bad, and the people and places that filled Trower's time. There is also a growing awareness of time's fidelity: "Except in such backwatersas this overlooked hotelthey have not yet erased Vhere where a window called my bluffI talk abstractedly with phantoms, am uneasily at peace." When I finished this collection, made up of new poems 'Give a man a oioe he can smoke. Give man a book he can read. nd his home is bright with a calm delight Through the room be poor Indeed, James Thomson 1834-1882 4.

A tremendous selection at TROWER carving a niche BOLE with some fierce drive for excellence and success that he has harnessed to writing." Regrettably much of what Purdy has to say is hidden between stories of Trower's drinking prowess, Trower's living prowess and, naturally, I guess, Purdy's ability to RAGGED HORIZOSS, by Peter Trouer. McClelland Stewart. $5.95. 595-4232.