how did I meet him Isaw him and I touched him and we stuck together Su Croll, "The Tar Baby" PARADOX, ambivalence, ineluctable mystery: all figure in the collections reviewedhere. John Smith, in Strands the Length of the Wind (Ragweed, 96 pages, $9.95paper), meditates on what he describes as "the case of an anonymous planetand an anonymous intelligent species, for which the details of history wouldhave differed." His poems focus on flux, cycles, and shifting perceptions.They draw much from science; "The Variables ... .. Here theProbability," "Gravitational Capture ... .. To Define a Point"are a few typical titles. Smith`s poems acknowledge the pain of losttraditions: "Stories / tell of a land of one prolific mountain, back /before difference, before things parted from their names" ("The BirdsReturned") - In the world of Schrodinger`s cat, itself evoked in"Scrutinized, Sanitized," The ground on which you cannot choose but shiftfrom foot to footthat too is creaking and groaning as the veritable space itoccupies expands ("This Grand Circumference") The power of Smith`s poems arises fromtheir fusion of the cerebral and the sensual and from ironic comment oncontemporary consciousness. In many of the poems Smith employs a form thatenacts his themes of flux and shift: a long free-verse line unfolding itself intwo quatrains followed by two tercets (and sometimes by a closing one-linestanza). He invokes traditional form even as he unbalances it. Smith`s area of exploration is the mosaicof world and consciousness. Ralph Gustafson glories in the singleconsciousness, contemplating and creating its unities in Configurations at Midnight (ECW, 80 pages, $12 paper). Gustafson links himself with the Greeks who "looked at their starsand put them into configurations." These poems, all untitled, run on frompage to page, separated by tiny starshaped symbols - a constellation of poemswhose range of allusion some will find irritating. Others will find itexhilarating to be in the presence of one at ease in the company of Yeats,Frost, Voltaire, Byron, Keats, and Chaplin - all of whom appear on one page.These are poems by an elder of the tribe of bards - poems of meditation,acceptance, harmony with nature. Gustafson`s free verse ripples alongpleasingly, although there are flat stretches. Notions of renewal and of therenewing power of love recur. A she figure associated with green and with spring`syellow is glimpsed often in a garden. Gustafson`s affirmations honour the tiny,the intimate, and the monumental. He is at ease with the homely and the heroic,the contemporary and the ancient. Listen: The taxi-driver I took on Santorin The half-exploded island in the AegeanSea Atlantis sunk with all its perfection beneath The winedark sea-thepolaroid of him I took fixed on his windshield fading in the sun, Not a time hepassed but he put both hands Out the driver`s window and yelled "Rejoice!"Xairete"! What distinguishes this book cannot beillustrated by excerpts. Its musical structure of "contrasts andcounterpoints" creates a shifting sky of the mind. Gustafson reminds usthat "Being is what the instructed heart has." For John Donlan in Baysville (Anansi, 63 pages, $12.95 paper) I theinstructed heart arises from "that part of our nature that existsindependent of civilization, or even conscious thought." Baysville, writesDonlan, is "partly an encrypted autobiography." The first three linesof the opening poem might be taken as a statement of Donlan`s project: To be a meaning generator like that red bush,artifice without taking thought, awareness of mystery under your clothes. ("Park") Like John Ashbery, Donlan defeatsnarrative and thwarts logic through disconnected images. One is reminded ofAndre Breton in his 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism: "Put your trust inthe inexhaustible nature of the murmur." Through Donlan`s skill withmusical phrasing, tine, and image, these seemingly haphazard observationsembody the findings of contemporary physics that fascinate John Smith: realityas particle flow within a field of probability. Donlan is the bird for thosewho dismiss contemporary poetry that does not enact flux in some such fashion: Say goodbye to the monument losing its bearingsin the rush of sensation: a bird bursts from its mouth, scattering a new soundalong the river. ("Play Dead") "Some shift some perceptualshift" is also at the core of Su Croll`s Worlda Mirth (Kalamalka, 119 pages, $11.95 paper). Worlda Mirth,winnerof the 1991 Kalamalka New Writers Competition, is an outstanding book. Crollexplores a number of fashionable topoi -the body,language, the making of meaning. But like its central metaphor, the carnival, Worlda Mirth shows you a good time.There is a narrative of sorts (with different versions): the woman speakingfollows the carnival with two midget lovers, napoleon and jocko. Thus she gains entrance to theeros of carnival, the carnival oferos. The shaper, napoleon, and jocko, the trickster,represent differing possibilities for the woman, both of which she abandonseventually, to write her "worlda mirth." The spirit of play rules inthis book. Its six sections are prefaced by a photograph evoking a world ofedgy excitement; there are "Bathing Beauties Astride a Prize Bull"and "Bicycle Acrobats" and "Ferris Wheels at Night."Epigraphs are sometimes stuck to the endings of poems, or opposite them.Italics and capitals are used freely to signal carnival voices. Prose sectionswith panting, racing rhythms are interspersed among the poems. A title,"What Are You Going to Dance On it You Can`t Stand the Bandages,"shows up elsewhere as three lines in the poem "Abandoning a BeautifulLanguage." The Tar Baby of Tales from Uncle Remus and the Feejee Mermaid(a fake mermaid made from a fish`s tail grafted on a monkey`s body) slip in andout of the narrative. Worlda Mirth dazzleswith its syncopated beat of the carnival`s raunchy eros. Barkers` voices weave in and out: you can`t win if you don`t play everybody downeverybody ready no more bets come on in try your luck one win choice take theking take the king of goats home with you tonight... come right in I`ll besetting them up I`ll be getting them up c`mon in don`t you worry don`t bescared he won`t bite he won`t bite hard you`ll love it you can`t lose egg beater devil drop elephant shakermonkey spine acrobat blender boy fish grip club katherine wheel tar babyfeather flier ("You Can`t Win if You Don`t Play") George McWhirter`s AStaircase for All Souls: The British Columbia Suite: A Wooded Masque for Readers and Listeners (Oolichan, 128 pages, $10.95 paper) also assertspoetry`s primary oral quality. McWhirter`s book is a paean to the BritishColumbia landscape; it is also a meditation on journeys and islands (Ireland and the Gulf Islands). Thebook`s third section (of four) consists of a long poem, "Notes Toward theDisappearance of a Canadian Family on the Gulf Islands," that in focusingon two generations of a family becomes a consideration of a province`s historyand landscape: So I the father sits, His property, like the giant`s Story, A vast acre; the past: An ache They all own equally, Raw gulfand open reaches of the memory. McWhirter`s apprehension of nature partakesof the intensity and visionary quality of medieval Irish poetry; in this he isakin to Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley. But a sardonic burnout utterly hisown leavens the tenderness: Spring! The ground here thistled And ferned over, Measled with vine maple, hatchingits sept- Or octuple tips, like gangrenous claws In the clean face of Aprilair. The results of this pleasure As marked and precise as teenage Zits. How they stab their faces withchocolate. ("The Quick") A wry burnout recurs here, as in a poemabout sex, "The Elegance of a Man and a Woman Making a Girl Descended froma Seabird and a Bog" and in a poem about children: We say we are wincing still From the scald-marks Of their urine For they leaked more ammonia Onus than Uranus. ("Of Sons and Daughters") McWhirter`s work shares themes andstrategies with the other poets considered here: an acute sense of relativity,a sallying into the surreal, an awareness of the mystery and fragility of theself and nature. Like Su Croll, he delights in the sparkle and singing oflanguage. He seems to me the most accomplished poet of the lot. He makes thattar baby dance.