House on the Edge of Ice

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

Glenn Kletke has made an imaginative reconstruction of life in Glacier
House Hotel, an old establishment in the Rogers Pass that was torn down
in 1929. Old photographs of the hotel and more recent ones of the
setting help create the atmosphere. He provides word portraits of 22
visitors and employees, as well as descriptions of rooms and events. The
most delightful poems in the book are shaped ones, more than a dozen of
them, including a poem about the observation tower shaped like a tower,
one about the architecture of the hotel tracing the outline of a chalet,
and one about the dining room in the form of a table. His style in the
poems with a normal format is serviceable rather than eloquent, but his
love of historical fact keeps the reader interested.

House on the Edge of Ice offers a fine glimpse into an elegant way of
life that has vanished. Kletke’s passion for this bit of history is
refreshing among so many contemporary volumes of formless introspection.