The Shooting of Dan McGrew - Softcover

Robert Service was born in England and earned a worldwide reputation as a poet of the Arctic. He died in Europe in 1958.

Grade 6 Up Ballads have strong rhythms, and the texts of such epic tales as Dan McGrew (and Harrison's The Cremation of Sam McGee Greenwillow, 1987) are humane in their exposition of our heroic qualities and artful in the choice and composition of language. This poem is an anecdote from the days of the gold camps in Alaska. Service, writing in 1907, played up the melodrama using all of the props of a sort of Last Chance Saloon for his stage. Harrison employs opaque paints in relatively untextured areas frequently outlined thickly with contrasting color lines. There's a hint of Lautrec's posters at times. Saloon interiors provide sufficient details to draw readers in. And the impressionistic rainbow-like swirls of blues, purples, and yellows carry them through the boozy dream-cum-nightmares of a miner's psyche as he finds a return to ``civilization'' more than he can handle. The design in uncluttered: the pristine glossy white left-hand pages house the verses set in a large serifed typeface, and opposite are the black-framed pictures. Words and pictures make a strong pair. A plausible fantasy, attractive in its trim narrative setting. Kenneth Marantz, Art Education Department, Ohio State University, Columbus
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.