Two titles from Down East Books among new releases

Connoisseurs of fine Maine literature and photography have come to appreciate the high standards of Down East Books. This month’s regional minireviews feature two titles from the Camden publishing house.

FOREVER WILD: Maine’s Magnificent Baxter State Park, by Robert Villani, Down East, 112 pages, $35. The price of this coffee-table book may exceed the budget of many readers, but at least examine a copy at your local library and savor Villani’s intelligent text and brilliant color photographs taken from many vantage points inside the park. Two of his best: a rainbow over Mount Katahdin as seen from Daicey Pond, and a meadow full of orange hawkweed.

GROWING UP IN MAINE: Recollections of Childhood From the 1780s to the 1920s, edited by Charles and Samuella Shain, Down East, 263 pages, $14.95. This unique collection lives up to its billing as a series of 22 vivid articles about growing up in the Pine Tree State. Different age categories and walks of life are represented. One of the best entries was written by novelist Kate Douglas Wiggin who recalls, at age 12, meeting Charles Dickens on a train from Portland to Boston.

LAKE VIEW REVISITED: A Centennial Book, by William R. Sawtell, P.O. Box 784, Greenville 04441, 167 pages, $16.95. The author has updated and enlarged his history of the Piscataquis County lakeside hamlet perhaps best known for its creation in the 1800s by the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and in later years, for its early election returns. The third smallest organized plantation in Maine, Lake View’s colorful past is resurrected through former residents’ ramblings, and through numerous black-and-white photographs.

PICK A CARD, by Betsy Sholl, Coyote/Bark publication of the Maine Arts Commission, 30 pages, $6.95. This collection of verse by the Portland poet won the 1991 Maine Arts Commission Poetry Award. Juror and poet Donald Hall described it as “a book of adult experience and strong feeling in which irony examines and protects while narrative presents and corrodes.”

Finally, a correction in a review published last month. “Cycloid,” a book of poems by Harry Solomon of Belfast, was published by his Figure Eight Press, Box 333, 126 Western Ave., Augusta 04330. The price is $12.

Richard R. Shaw is the NEWS editorial page assistant.