A Crow's Dream

In Douglas Valentine's A Crow's Dream "there is / No dark side to / The planet anymore." Other mysteries are ominous: "How much of all that seems certain / Could vanish with a word?" The natural world is tangible to Valentine as he prunes trees or watches "ghostly columns of frozen mist arise" from the Contoocook River in winter. Yet all is not lyric: Marvis Flynn, protagonist of a long poem that takes up a quarter of the book, parodies the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day our daily dread." Sinister characters abound. The villainous Cadillac Jack compares his prostitutes to cars and strikes a match "across her teeth." Love is uncertain, although it may redeem you; and, as in Ovid, characters who seem stable change into other forms-birds, perhaps. Sometimes Valentine channels Robert Frost, sometimes old ballads, sometimes the Surrealists.