Post by shayepoet on May 29, 2008 21:36:43 GMT 2
Sea Lions Sing Scat
Carol Levin
Carol Levin's poems take place at "the crease between sea and land." Her fresh, original voice is alive with sound, sea, light, color and the singing of sea lions. Here is a world where men with their giant cranes, their tugboats and barges, their container ships and ferries, wrestle a living from the sometimes obstinate sea.
And the poet, who is the watcher of this world that sometimes spins out of control, knows that "when you work the waterfront, you take whatever comes along." This she does, wrapping her arms around herself for solace, loving what is beautiful,"getting on with the business of being alive." I love these poems.
-- Patricia Fargnoli
Sample poem:
Barge Men’s Beds Smell of Lavender Elixir and Red China Silk
A ruffle of whitecaps signals turbulence chuffing across the Sound in five a.m. mist, where,
from a high hill I watch Manson’s slings and cables flap around the floating
crane’s telescoping boom, a web of lovely red lattice work
housed on a black barge operating near the abandoned sealion float: sealions
gone off, like every summer to Baja, to fornicate.
This little plume of thought carries me to my morning bath in a tub vast as
the right arm of the ocean. Workers busy with the hard details of the day
hold a swaying circle of orange pads to enclose oil seeping to the surface
from the sunken boat.
Reeking of engine oil and drenched in sweat,
inch by inch bargemen maneuver
the rocking crane, refresh
their fatigue with afternoon smoke breaks, as I drench my disregarded garden
taking pains to find one single flower.
When the position
is marked divers suit up, slide under.
Again and again they muscle slippery slings to get a purchase on the vessel.
I go along in my common cadences listening to myself as I move hour by hour
and early, under a clean white sheet on my single bed I am entangled in a dream.
The overcast day
ticks forward
dissolves, until like a flare the crane’s night lights burn.
The hoist begins
the herky-jerky motion
to heave her above water. The old girl's planks
swollen round as a milk cow
jettison saltwater like spitting in hot grease
as it lets go a spooky arching falsetto sound
when the boat and the sea abdicate their embrace---
Now, the men can head home to their own beds
Review for Sea Lions Sing Scat:
“With titles such as, "Barge Men's Beds Smell of Lavender Elixir and Red China Silk," this collection awakens the reader to the active sensory life of the poet, whose keen observations reflect life on the Puget Sound.
This writing is a testament to the preciousness and underlying fragility of life when closely observed.”
-- Miriam Bassuk
About the author:
Carol Levin’s chapbook Sea Lions Sing Scat was published June 20007 by
Finishing Line Press and Red Rooms & Others is due in 2008 from Pecan Grove
Press. Work appears in The Massachusetts Review, Third Coast,The Seattle
Review, Pedestal, Cortland Review, Comstock Review & others. She
collaborated in translating Chekhov’s four major plays.(The Three Sisters &
Three More, plays by Anton Chekhov) Levin is an Editorial Assistant for the
Crab Creek Review and teaches the Alexander Technique in Seattle
ISBN: 978-1-59924-139-5, 27 pages, $14.00
[glow=teal,2,300]BUY HERE, BUY NOW:[/glow]
Open Books: tinyurl.com/3o2sqy
Finishing Line Press: tinyurl.com/4fo72x
Amazon: tinyurl.com/522v39