Hero of the Play

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
the author of Calling Texas and Earth Prime.

Readers will like or dislike this book depending on their fondness for
hockey, for Hero of the Play is a collection of hockey poems. Sometimes
Harrison gets caught up in the technicalities of the game or the
preoccupations of fandom, but he can be quite moving when he uses hockey
as a way of talking about family relationships, especially father-son
relationships. The form of the poems is a kind of ragged prose. It is
evocative when he pays attention to rhythm and sound (as in the final
poem, “Hush”), but too often the style is flatly descriptive,
leaving the reader wondering if an essay format might have suited the
writer more. Although Harrison has genuine talent, and this collection
will appeal to hockey fans who like poetry, he hasn’t quite made the
game universal.