It is a pleasure to read an artist who realizes that poetry is as much about what you don’t say as about what you choose to put on the page. One key connection between the poet and the reader is the mutual understanding of the understated. Poets are playing a game with us. How much can I communicate in how few words? That is where similes, metaphors, and the more esoteric forms of expression fit. They offer clues to a wider world that we share in creating.
White is a master of those simpler techniques, and takes the communication a step further. A single phrase in one line hints at a new meaning to what has gone before. Snapshots of seemingly random, sparkling images change our perspective of what the poem has been saying to us.
White’s message is not overstated or belaboured. It is slipped into the conversation like the song of a wren who lives in a rubber boot. The meaning is aided by the finer tools in the artist’s repertoire: punctuation, expressive language, point of view.
Many of his poems end with a zoom out to a vista, putting the ideas in a larger perspective usually — but not always — beautiful.
Many poems deal with the ability to change for the better. In some, as in Dream of a Cottonwood, the theme is unstated, the image merely presented for readers to process as we wish. In other poems, a bit of research reveals a clear message. For example, I’ll save you the time; about ten years ago, two dams were removed from the Elwha river, and now it flows in its original path. Now we understand the poem, and for one moment, optimism reigns.
White is an artist, a traveler and a sailor, looking back on his long and winding course through the patchwork of life, mildly surprised and mostly pleased with it, yet able to deal with the disappointments and learn from them. This gives the book both balance and emotional variety. Not all the images are beautiful. Some are unpleasant to think of. There are poems of sadness, balanced by poems of optimism like “Just a Little Bit of Rain.”
This book of poetry is, as the title of the last poem shows, a love letter to the earth. Age looks back at the past with both romance and cynicism. Highly recommended for fans of well-written poetry.
(5 / 5)