Rhymes of a Western Logger

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia in Prince
George.

If you like Robert Service or Rudyard Kipling then this is the book for
you. Swanson, a.k.a. “The Bard of the Woods,” was active as a poet
in the 1940s and early 1950s, when, according to Howard White, he sold
80,000 copies of his little books. He is still with us today, though
apparently not writing. Harbour Publishing has brought together the
complete texts of three books from the 1940s, along with selections from
a 1953 book that Swanson co-authored with his brother, Dan “Seattle
Red” Swanson.

This book is made up of good old-fashioned popular verse: sentimental
love poems, tall tales, adventures with moral twists, and poems to
trees, rivers, and nature’s beauty in general. Swanson has the
rollicking line, often complete with internal rhyme, that Service
favored. But he doesn’t quite have Service’s command of form, and a
few too many lines stumble over their own rhythms. Here is a sample of
his work at its smoothest: “In that Western town, where the Twin Peaks
frown, and the mountains spring out of the sea, / Was the Sunshine
Saloon (that was run by McGoon) where the gang were drinking it free; /
And loggers and miners and men of the sea together were drinking a toast
/ To favourite women, across the line, who lived on the Barbary Coast. /
When through a trapdoor that was cut in the floor, and into the roaring
saloon, / Came a crew of men you won’t see again if you travel from
here to the moon; / For this was the crew of the Beaver, that ship of
historical fame, / That sailed ’round the Horn before we were born, to
flagship the fur-trading game” (from “The Wrecking of the
Beaver”). It’s a West Coast version of Drummond’s “The Wreck of
the Julie Plante” done in the rhythms of “The Shooting of Dan
McGrew.”

If your tastes are limited to serious contemporary poetry, give this
one a pass, but if you also think poetry can sometimes be entertaining
and fun then this is a book for you.