Book Review

Merge with the River
by James Downs
Poetic Matrix Press, Madera, CA, 2004.

"Merge with the River" is the real thing, description and evocation of nature, as seen through the poet's eye, not presented ready made on television, flat, boxed-in, between commercials, played and played out for consumption.

James Downs' poems urge us out there, to experience nature as it really is, how it moves us, and affects all our senses. His poems are in the best tradition of the American transcendentalism, and also Walt Whitman. The poet worships at the shrine of nature, as in this excerpt from "String":

I have come to this water's edge
a pledge of sorts to
strenuous wilderness strivings
a ritual of belief in
particles of
loam wave breeze dirt
this is my church
ever wild earth waiting
for strung-together
day-mysteries such as
jay caw questions such as
fish jump concentric circles such as
this whole path of dirt…(p.102)

And this excerpt (from p79), from a poem with no title:

there is old growth to deep forest
many hymns made to it as
there are many hymns coming from forest leaves….

In evoking the immediacy and textures of things, James Downs' poems belong in the company of such poets as William Carols Williams, Stanley Kunitz, Mary Oliver, and Jane Hirshfield. There is a strong Buddhist tone to the poems, as well, in the poet's respect for nature in its transiency.

While he describes nature in its immediacy, the poet also writes about the symbolic role of nature in a person's life:

many streams converge in our mind's dream we've tucked
water in many places impossible to remember
where it is all is
birdsong keeps us lifted
to higher branches…

There is social consciousness too, in James' poems. Not unlike Joy Harjo, the native American poet, James could be righteous, "In This World: a Reverie" he begins:

"I know, we will make everyone be poet they will have
To find notebooks and pencils and pens and places
To sit and they will spend their time writing poems
Working on poems making poems and the bombs
Will stay in racks and the planes will stay in hangers
and all the people of the world won't automatically
know what poetry is so they will have to ask each other…"

And the reverie concludes:

"And the planes and bombs and barracks would be
pressed into clean sheets of paper upon which to write
each                         new                    poem."

A lovely reverie indeed, bombs pressed not into plowshares, but into paper and ink, and then into poems, which people share them with their fellows throughout the world.

"Merge with the River" is a beautifully produced volume, published by Poetic Matrix, with a lovely painting by Penny Otwell. Poet and illustrator are both residents of Yosemite valley. There is also a fine photograph of our poet on back cover.

This is a lovely book, with which to spend some time. But beware, you may forget to put on the television!

Reviewed by Paul Dolinsky
editor@thegoldenlantern.com