Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Water Quality

Water Quality

Woodman Kerkham, Cynthia

Paperback

Series: Hugh MacLennan Poetry

General Poetry

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0228022975
ISBN13: 9780228022978
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: Sep 15 2024
Pages: 128
Weight: 0.30
Height: 0.50 Width: 5.10 Depth: 7.60
Language: English

I find my bearings by clouds of moon jellies / afloat beneath my anchored boat, / pulsing the sea's bright night, / their milky way, unfurling.

In these lush and vivid poems water gloves a swimmer's body, is satin, yes, viscous. Albumen, vernix, newborn slick. It rinses gai lan - bright green in a silver bowl in Hong Kong or hibernates in the Pacific Northwest under a silky pelt / of rain. People-less. Days, months of this / hiss, softness breaking cliffs.

Cynthia Woodman Kerkham ponders the urgent question, What does water want? Whether as the body of a beloved lake, where people wrestle with the concerns of stewardship, or as the sea in which to sail and drift, or as a gene pool simmering through a family's veins, water is the main character here. It can be turbid, the amniotic colour of spittle, or, in a time of drought, brilliant beads. As a stream flushed over granite, water seems to want so little it shares another's colour, yet here, it gets our full and necessary attention.

Rich with vibrant language and intensity, these poems sizzle in lyric form, monologues, elegy, and haibun. Water Quality calls on us to consider that our very survival is at stake unless we make a vow to this vital element to cherish it as we would a partner.

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