All I Want Is a Walk-on Part

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.

LaMonte Palmer’s book reveals the genial personality of a retired
physician who is fond of his family (he has a number of poems about his
wife and his grandchildren). The poems show a good sense of place (his
childhood on the prairies and his years in Africa are frequent
subjects), and he is particularly good on the dry prairie country around
Lethbridge. But the book is stylistically weak. Occasionally he uses
rhyme in an effective way but trite expressions abound. Here and there a
narrative succeeds, as in “Father, Death Called for You and Me,” in
which the figure of death appears as a beggar with a bow and fiddle
protruding from his pack. But too often the poems fall into the category
of light verse or occasional poetry.