Title: The Necessary Boat
Author: Susan Baran
Publisher: The Groundwater Press, New York

Opening this book with its wonderful title, right away one is standing beside the poet. Pieces of reality are flying past in rich variety and the poet is taking rapid notes. The notes are sharp and clear. American history, natural history, personal history, horrosrs of war and of burned bodies, moments in the classroom, moments of absurdity, comic details of American life, and flights of intuition, like the sudden glimpse into the mind of

the painter oO'Keeffe, are all recorded accurately and with flashing wit.And there are slower, more meditative passages, as in the title poem, where the poet opens up the life of John James Audubon and interprets him for us as perfectly as he interpreted the birds. And what is rare, we seem not only the artist at work, but his family at work being an artist's family.

There aren't any tricks in these poems, no misty special effects, no attempts to beguile an audience. Instead, there's a lively curiosity, even a scientific curiosity, a keen intelligence, an a childlike integrity which doesn't alter reality, or flatter it. But these poems aren't at all cold. Often they're very poignant, as in the two elegies and autobiographical "Fine Tuning" and "Corona," which are poignant because of their truth.

Anne Porter