Crossing WatersJourney and passage are essential themes running through Ray Garman’s collection, Crossing Waters. In accessible, everyday language, Garman harnesses the sacred, reaching ever beyond the words themselves and into the open spaces around them. The reader travels through time (the collection is organized in sections named for the seasons) and through space with Garman, who seems to consider the soul to be the most powerful vehicle. The “growing up” of an American man may be a familiar (to some, perhaps too-familiar) theme for a collection, but Garman’s emphasis on the spiritual – and on the spiritual in the sensual – allows the reader something more to consider here. In the poem, “Twenty Something Coffee,” he weaves many of his central ideas: “We flush / the metaphorical phlegm / from corpus community / as we break bread….” Later in the collection, these themes reappear to an older, perhaps even wiser speaker: “I am made / moderate / with age, / unable / to wave / a wand / and feed / the world.” Garman succeeds in tempering the weight of his material with a great joy in his language: “…earth mother magic / brings sleep / with thickets / of crickets…” (“Celestial Juke Joint”) or “I tingle / the tangle of jangled / nerve endings…” (“The Boys Swim”). Garman, however, never quite overcomes the tone of self-help/spirituality: “Where would the truth live / if it were absolutely honest?” (“Truth Pick-up”) or “I’d like / to choose / the path of wisdom / and kindness” (“My Choice”). Garman’s “searching poet” schtick is doubtlessly sincere here, and his transcendent moments of linguistic glee give the reader plenty to consider and enjoy along this path.
- Courtney Bambrick
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