[.ca] The Spell of the Yukon (ISBN 1419183257)

Wild Prose, Rough Living, Tender Heart:
Robert Service wrote in the golden years of the Klondike -- of the rough and ready men, and women just as tough. No-one in Robert's world (real or imagined) minced words or had any self-consciousness about them. It was live and let live and sometimes kill or be killed. Reading his poems transports us back to that frozen place in nature when it was literally every man and every woman for him/herself, yet Robert conveys to us not only a sensitivity (in his poem extolling the simple light switch -- something quite novel in those times, especially in the Klondike), but the beauties he saw in the others -- gathered around the village's first "grammyphone", hearing the voice of "canned man" coming from it -- some savages taking to their canoes because it seems demonic, yet others equally savage, enraptured by this miracle of sound. Cold cabins, with hoarfrost clinging to the inside rafters -- unwashed masses in itchy long-johns struggling out of bed on an arctic day -- and the beauty of the lilies ("Unforgotten") living side by side with a trapper's two-timing woman getting her just desserts (over "a black fox skin") -- Robert Service touches the heart and soul of the rough and raw Klondike in the early 1900's, and shows us the soul's emotions and colors from inky black to pure gold.

American Poetry Classic:
This is a classic. PERIOD! Do yourself a favor and buy this little book so that you can memorize "The Creamation of Sam McGee" if nothing else. You will always have a way to keep small children spellbound with this captivating verse. This, along with Service's other poems have a magical way of transforming us to the Yukon. You will feel as though you are there!