HOLD THE RAIN IN YOUR HANDS: POEMS NEW AND SELECTED. Sorestad, Glen. Moose Jaw, Coteau Books, c1985. 107pp, paper, $8.95, ISBN 0-91992640-1. CIP Grades 9 and up Reviewed by Warner Winter Volume 14 Number 1 1986 January Glen Sorestad is a very competent poet whose persona is uncomplicated and likeable. He can be faulted only for occasional preciousness and a desire to spend too much time with unforgettable characters he has known. The poems are never sentimental, always competent and sensitive, and one comes across occasional genuine surprises like "Prairie Blizzard, January, 1956," a poem that uses as its central image a herd of cattle overcome by a storm. Sorestad never romanticizes his landscape and the life that clings to it, and this poem is a particularly fine meditation on the severity of western Canadian life and the indifferent assaults of forbidding climate. Sorestad acknowledges the assistance of Patrick Lane; it is this poet he most resembles. Both share an exhilarating clarity and understatement, but while Lane seems to have moved indoors and become a man of letters, Sorestad remains out of academe, with characters like "Old Snoozy" who always has the first beer at the Windsor Hotel in Buchanan. Hold the Rain in Your Hands is divided into six sections, the first five sections from five earlier books and the last consisting of twenty-nine new poems. It is an accessible, readable book of poetry written in a discursive, colloquial style. Its anecdotal nature and apparently effortless writing make it excellent for reading and writing exercises for a high school audience. Warner Winter, Emery C.I., North York, Ont.