Haunted Hills and Hanging Valleys: Selected Poems, 1969–2004

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.

Peter Trower writes a straightforward sort of poetry, close to speech,
and rooted in recognizable experiences. His big influence is Al Purdy,
and his treatment of his years as a logger will call the work poems of
Tom Wayman to mind. In “Through the Apricot Air,” he describes the
poet as “a decoder of arcane messages,” “a cardsharp of words,”
and “a brief mad seer” who “leaves as his legacy only a random
scattering / of delirious verse.” Trower’s works are not as
visionary as the descriptions would imply, but he does convey the grit
and delirium of daily life through anecdotes, and he occasionally gives
some sublime reflections on landscape. If the poems seem artless, it is
because this poet chooses the mundane over the arcane. He prefers “the
booze cans of yesteryear” to more highfaulutin themes. The poems have
a sameness of style that becomes tiresome after a while.