Under the Mountain Born

John Swain's Under the Mountain Born collects 100 poems, many of which have appeared in fine little mags and zines. Swain's images like his tenses shift. they are plastic: now ephemeral, suddenly very real and so forth. The result is a steadiness of voice, though the poems greatly vary. The man can write a sentence, i'd say. Generally speaking nature would seem to be at the fore. The star subject of his poems, though, are his thoughts which in wheeling figure-eights convey private takes-chiefly on things like consciousness, conscience, duty, guilt, rapture, protected innocence, sorrow and the role beauty plays in this world.