Wolf Tracks on the Welcome Mat
by Paul Zarzyski
A Review
by Ray A. March
I write this "review" of Paul Zarzyski's collection of poems Wolf Tracks on the Welcome Mat from an uncommon and personally awkward point of view: I am married to the publisher and I have witnessed first hand not only the reach for perfection it took to put the poems together as a book, I have seen the emotional reactions of its many readers when they first put Zarzyski's latest work in their hands.
Item 1: If the Montana Wilderness Association were to name a "poster poet" it would be Zarzyski. Why? Why would a poet with an impeccable reputation built in the cowboy poetry arena be so popular with an environmental organization?
Item 2: The book sold out at the 2003 Monterey Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival. Why? Why would a book of poetry so popular with environmentalists be a runaway sellout at a gathering of cowboy sympathizers?
The answer is in the gutsy risk Zarzyski takes in standing beside and most often in front of this sensitive collection. The title poem is the giveaway. "Wolf Tracks on the Welcome Mat." This poem is a conditional celebration, not a lament, of the wolf's return to our wilderness.
To quote:
The wolf circles
back to old Montana
as we go back to our childhood
homeground decades later to mourn
our own passingTo comment with a poetic voice of hope on the repatriation of the wolf to its homeland is damn risky if you were to let ranching traditions and their anti-wolf prejudices intimidate you. But Zarzyski manages to cross over. In his on-stage performances and bookstore readings he prefaces this poem with what I call his "wolf defense." After all, Zarzyski, tells his audiences, the wolf didn't ask to be a wolf, he didn't request specific wolf traits or a wolf DNA. He was born a wolf, just as the rattlesnake was born a rattlesnake. It's not difficult to identify with Zarzyski's logic. At the human level none of us get to say who our natural parents are. We are what we are.
In taking his stance on the wolf — and don't be misled, the book is not a front-to-back-page homage to the wolf — Zarzyski becomes the binding thread that's necessary if there is to be a meeting of the minds between — until now at least — factions that traditionally like to see themselves on one side of the fence or the other. A fence so often the divider between urban thinking and rural living.
There are 62 poems in "Wolf Tracks on the Welcome Mat" and each has its own message as great poems should. Some are light and reminiscent like "Antipasto," a well-made point that the true Northern Italian antipasto has no relation to the relish tray by the same name at your favorite Eye-talian joint. Some of the poems are heavy with sociopolitical comment like "The Hand," that strikes out at racism. In all, regardless of the message this is bare-knuckle poetry. Zarzyski will make you laugh and he can make you cry. I've seen audiences smile, nod their heads and chuckle at "The Tumbleweed Munchies," and in Reno I saw a woman read "Sister Sunday" to herself and break into tears.
I know there was a woman
in this same world, a woman not mad,
cruel or violent, who would have gladly died
the full menu of deaths offered here
just for one more mothering dayThe poems of "Wolf Tracks on the Welcome Mat" are startlingly new and refreshing. Surprisingly, many are 10 or 15 years old, but never before put to print as a comprehensive collection. Zarzyski, who has eight other books of poetry in his name, only now has released them. Why now? Because this is the right time, a time when so many of us are asking tougher questions, when so many of us are searching for strong words in whatever form and not just platitudes and lies, when so many of us want to hear the truth. Zarzyski's poetry does that.
Wolf Tracks on the Welcome Mat by Paul Zarzyski
Oreana Books (an imprint of Carmel Publishing Company)
Hardback, 137 pages
Art by Theodore Waddell
$20
To order call 1/800/731-3322
or visit www.carmelpublishingco.com