JOHN HARRIS, REVIEW of A Murder of Crows: Prince George Literary Anthology Containing Works Read at Books and Company, ed. Stephen StLaurent. Prince George: Jeffe Publications, 1997. $6.95. This sixty-page, spiral-bound paperback contains the work of five Prince George poets, all men, whose photos and names (Andrew Burton, David Quast, Christopher Earl, Stephen StLaurent and Ian Kluge) appear on the back of the back cover. The five are "new" poets. This is evident because little in the way of previous publication is listed in the bio-blurbs that go with the names and pictures, and because the book's appearance and apparatus indicate self-publication. The five poets are doing what V. S. Naipaul says you must do if you think you are a writer. You must pretend you are a writer, until people assume you are one. Of course, you yourself are never sure. In pretending to be a poet, you have to assume that your audience is small and made up mostly of other poets. The inner circle of this audience is made up of the poets you admire. Some of these are likely to be dead, but they still speak in their poems and through their admirers in the inner circle. Pretending to be a poet also involves publishing your own book or anthology or magazine with your own writing in it. You give your publication a memorable title. You add an editor's note acknowledging friends (in this case the folk in the bookstore who run a reading series for you and put up with your noisy chatter). You include a "c" with a circle around it, and an announcement that your publication may not be reproduced in whole or part without written permission from the writers. The reader--particularly the reader of poetry--understands that the title of such a book has to be either ridiculously assertive or (as in this case) depreciatingly ironic, that the price is arbitrary (even though in this case it resonates with sufficient actuarial credibility to allow bookstores to try seriously to sell the book), and that permission to reproduce any or all of the poems in the book would not be hard to come by. There is a self-consciousness to it all, endearing because it is entirely appropriate to folk who are engaging in the intimidating task of breaking into the inner circle. For all of these poets, the inner circle includes the familiar figures of modernism, in particular Pound, Williams, and Auden. Kluge gravitates to Auden, the rest to Williams and Pound (in his imagist phase). Traditional free verse predominates -- stacked phrases and