Winter 2004
below the low-water mark
Ryan Masters
Pudding House Publications
Johnstown, OH
29 pp. $8.95
Seawater runs through Ryan Masters
new chapbook below the low-water mark. Briny images and sea creatures
inhabit this trim, cohesive collection of eleven poems, whether the situation
involves an actual seafront where a Vietnamese boy gets swept away by a wave or
the Sacramento County Detox, where an inmate named K-Dog stands in as a
temporary Ahab, abusive and mad, causing surges of his own.
Masters (if you'll pardon the pun)
masters the language here, using subtle rhythmic devices and metaphoric
continuity to reel in his carp of truth. The reader is similarly snagged and
drawn along.
The only small
negatives in this collection are an unrepresentative no-cap title (despite the low-water
name, there are no lowercase poems in the collection) and the chapbook's
relative brevity; however, if the main complaint against a poet is that you want
more of his/her work to read, he/she is probably doing something
right. Recommended.
(One of the poems in
this collection originally appeared in ALR. Click
here to read "California.")
