Calling Texas

Peter Baltensperger is the editor and publisher of Moonstone Press and
the author of Arcana.

Almon’s third book of poetry, Calling Texas, is a collection of
miniatures of innocence and experience. Arranged in three (untitled)
parts, these new works by the Edmonton poet are about people and their
direct and indirect effects on the poet during his childhood,
adolescence, and adulthood. The poems in the first part oscillate
between moments at home with family members and friends, and travel
clips populated by incidental strangers. The second part consists mostly
of portraits—of friends, strangers, and the poet himself—captured
during visits, at parties, and during casual encounters. In the third
section, the poems become family histories, and portraits of relatives
and ancestors (including a poignant portrait of the poet’s mother,
“In the Movies”). Here the poet attempts to find—in family
heirlooms, photographs, and personal memories of childhood and
adolescence—a place in time for himself, his roots, and his
inheritance.

The poems are written in an easy, conversational, and chiefly narrative
style, with a minimum of symbolic and imagistic embellishments. The
characters populating the various scenarios are delineated with quick,
sharp strokes; they come to life immediately in often-brief appearances,
each a significant figure in the poet’s experience. Straightforward as
these poems may seem, they all contain glimpses of truth gleaned from a
moment, an encounter, an experience, a memory—pieces of a puzzle that
gradually develop into a portrait of the poet on his journey from
innocence into experience, from the wonder of childhood into the
tempered knowledge of maturity.