Winter Range

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 Christensen’s poems are written in a flat style about flat
experiences. He has some noble sentiments (strip joints are melancholy
places; imperfect free-range eggs are better than perfect factory farm
eggs; corporate giants take too much of our lives), but such feelings
are not enough to turn his casual musings into poems. His work seems to
be out of the lineage of Al Purdy, but Purdy knew the limits of the
colloquial sprawl while Christensen generally writes in excess. He works
as a park ranger and many of his poems deal with the outdoors, though
not with any original imagery. The touches of common language
(“horseshoe throwin’”) tend to be embarrassing, as is the
self-conscious references to himself as a poet. These poems mean well,
but the fine and sometimes folksy intentions are not enough.