Mirror Mirror

Michael Williamson was Reference Librarian at the National Library of Canada in Ottawa.

Mr. Baltensperger’s fourth collection is a sequence of poems about returning with his daughter to his ancestral home in Switzerland “before I became a tourist /in my own world.” All 29 poems explore gently the theme of the returning exile who is dislocated and bewildered by the strong pull of roots that are curiously foreign and strange yet, at the same time, quite soothing and mystical. The book’s strength is in its remarkably tender voice and confidential tone — like someone confiding a precious secret to you: “and thoughts retreat /into the hidden branches /of my brain.” Mr. Baltensperger injects exactly the right amount of innocence into the poems so that the deluge of Wordsworthian images from nature (waterfalls, glistening sun, waves, gentle breezes, summer showers, meadows, and mountains) do not read like hackneyed nature poems but as discoveries or accurate and well-rendered memories. Complementary photographs accompany the poems: they do not enhance much but do not get too much in the way, either. It is rare to read a collection that manages to escape the perilous ground of vanity publishing, (i.e., here are poems of my nice trip back home) yet cannot quite reach the quality demanded by much commercial poetry. This is by no means an important work, however; technically much of the poetry is riddled with banal images, which detract from any dramatic tension a poem might have: “At night /the mountains come alive /with spirits /flitting through the darkness /of their world.” And many of the poems rely too heavily on bald narrative: we did this, then we did that, etc. Still, this is worthwhile and full of human warmth and tenderness.