Stone Boat

Sheila Martindale is poetry editor of Canadian Author and Bookman and
the author of No Greater Love.

This is an extraordinarily depressing book, but a riveting one.
Essentially one long poem, Stone Boat is written in the voice of a
prairie farmer. All his life Franklin has eked out a spartan existence,
doing battle with drought, dust, mosquitoes, and all the other negatives
with which farmers in this inhospitable environment have to cope. The
pictures he paints are very bleak: “I have lived through a war /
watched Father / drown in an ocean of dust.” Many of his stories are
inspired by old photographs: “snapshots / flutter into dusty
corners.” Each photo brings on memories, most of them negative. Death
is a theme running through the book—the death of his parents, his
brother, friends, workers, his favourite cow—each one affecting him,
diminishing him. Franklin himself is dying from a disease of the lungs.

Wittman’s language is stark, brutal in places, tough to take, but
true to the mood. This book is not for the faint of heart or stomach,
but is a good read for those who savour life in the raw.