Five Islands. Anne Carroll Fowler. ( Pudding House Pub. 60 North Main St. Johnstown, Ohio.43031) http://www.puddinghouse.com $9.

Anne Fowler grew up in Maine, and the poems in this collection, FIVE ISLANDS evoke the sights, the smells, the sensibility, and the hardscrabble wisdom of a small New England coastal town. Fowler has an acumen for creating compelling imagistic poetry. In the poem CRANBERRY PICKING, Fowler paints a picture of a bountiful dinner table that is a subtext for a close-knit family:

" Later I'll imagine relish, jelly, snow,
creamed pearl onions...
I'll think of the table
fully extended, crowding the edges of the dining room-
Hugh and Malcolm
sipping from the fingerbowls,
Crazy Uncle Bob."

Don't you love the touch at the end? Everything is literally "on the table", including the iconoclastic boys, and the crazy uncle. Families like this are now as quaint as Sturbridge Village. But I like the poet's Rockwellian flourish, without the schmaltz. In this collection Fowler does not put nature on a leash,, but revels in its enigmatic and capricious character. AFTER THE WIND STORM is a perfect example of this. When the poet surveys the damage a storm wrought, her companion states: " I came this way in knee deep snow/when suddenly an owl/swooped down, silent as smoke." How often have we been caught with our fly down, just when we thought we had the bull by the proverbial horns? Pardon the cliches, but Fowler has certainly come up with an original way to say many things.

Doug Holder/ Aug 2002/ Ibbetson Update/ Somerville, Ma.

* Anne Fowler is the founder of the Chapter and Verse Poetry series in Jamaica Plain, Ma.