A FIGURE ON THE MOVE Alastair Macdonald St. John's, Breakwater, 1991. 120pp, cloth, $24.95 ISBN 1-55081-040-5. CIP Grades 10 and up/Ages 15 and up Reviewed by Don Precosky. Volume 19 Number 5 1991 October A Figure on the Move is a collection of retrospective, meditative poems accom­panied by black-and-white line draw­ings by the author. The drawing on the front cover is, naturally, a figure on the move. His back is to us, suggesting he is moving away from us in the same way that the past does, and it is autumn, the time of the harvest. And in this book Macdonald harvests his memories. The poems are descriptive and meditative pieces written in short lines. They exhibit great clarity of image but have a disturbing lack of rhythm, either traditional or free verse. To me it is because of this lack of rhythm that the book fails. It has a flow of images, but it lacks a flow of language and instead stumbles along in awkwardly chopped up prose bits. Don Precosky, College of New Caledonia, Prince George, B.C.