Where Blue Grama Grows.

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

Doris Bircham comes from the world of cowboy poetry, but readers should not reach for their six-guns on hearing that. She manages to write without lapsing into doggerel or folksiness, and she uses the vernacular sparingly. Her work reflects a deep love of the short grass prairies of southwest Saskatchewan and she knows its textures well, especially the drama of the weather and the procession of the seasons. The actual work of ranching is conveyed effectively: the reader will learn how a cow’s prolapsed uterus is sewn up, and the poetry relies a little too much on plain description and anecdote, and the present tense is overworked. She often blurs the boundary between strong feelings and sentimentality. In cowboy poetry, sentimentality always dominates.