I would reccomend it to anyone!

The nameless narrator of Stanley Crawford's book has something in common with today's survivalists of Ruby Ridge and the Republic of Texas. Isolated in his hillside homestead, growing most of his own food, he would create the perfect family -- Husband, Wife, Son, and Daughter. Not at all a conventional narrative, "Some Instructions..." is his guidebook to the good life.

And what a regimented, joyless life it is. Attached to the back of every cupboard door is a list of the cupboard's contents. For his daughter, still a toddler, he has prepared a toy washing machine for doll clothes. The warmth that he must have felt for his wife, at least once, breaks through in shadowy asides and subordinate clauses.

Crawford himself is a grower (read his nonfiction "A Garlic Testament") and his narrator shows the farmer's wisdom in the chapter "Waiting."

But his narrator is pathetically trapped in his own control fantasy. By giving his son a bicycle and toy cars, he somehow expects the boy to extrapolate to driving the real thing. In his ridiculous fight to protect his children from all harm, he reveals the helplessness that every parent feels.

The joke of this book may wear a little thin, after a while. But it is a fascinating look at certain ideas carried to their logical conclusion and beyond: home schooling, living in harmony with the land, "family values." This is an interesting, scary, and peculiar book.

Crawford's incredible "life exam", composed while on an extended stay in the hospital, is his way of ultimately dealing with his own death while also trying to find peace in the passing of his father. He does this wonderfully and broadens the scope of his poems by comparing his suffering(or at least confusion) of mortality by making poems out of other people's experiences. For me the most memmorable being "the boys" where he speaks of a friend who died, and his two children.

The sole weakness of Crawford's poetry may be how geographically confining it could be considered. some poems depend on a conciousness of current Scottish politics, geography, and literature. There is one named "zero" in which he speaks to nuclear arsenals stored in Scotland. The saving feature of most of his regional poems is they give enough searchable material so one is able to find out more with ease.

I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Robert Crawford one summer in St. Andrews, Scotland, and hearing him read some of his own poetry. His was the first poetry that i loved, for me all other poems are measured from his. Frankly i think that he merits this place. If you enjoy T.S. Eliot it would be a terrible mistake to overlook this collection and his past pieces.