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Tides at the Edge of the Senses
Tides at the Edge of the Senses by John Skapski (Libros Libertad $12.95)
A fisherman mystic philosopher, John Skapski, now a lawyer, spent many decades drifting on the tides. His first book in thirty years, Tides at the Edge of the Senses, is an elegiac tribute, tinged with surreal imagery, to fishing, gillnetters, the fishing community on this coast and to the fish. He knows that world intimately but is never romantic about it; too much discomfort, fear, boredom, and accident.
Sartre of the chuck, Skapski proffers salty sutras on being and non-being. "Tomorrow is only one permutation of yesterdays."; "Things are what they are, and also what thought would have them be."; Though he has a weakness for abstractions, (life, death, always, never), Skapski's best pieces are short and imagistic. "The words lay beached on the air / Stretched like kelp on its dry frames."; "Thunder like a cat, rubs its back along the air.";
There is a lot of death in this book. Not only the decay/spawn life cycle of salmon but also the constant reminder of the men who have drowned. He's philosophical, too, about the demise of that fishing culture, blaming no one, but the affectionate memories are tinged with regret. Though he has had a love/hate relationship with the lifestyle, he's also clearly been hooked.
978-0-9781865-6-2
--review by Hannah Main-Van Der Kamp
[BCBW 2008] "Poetry"
A fisherman mystic philosopher, John Skapski, now a lawyer, spent many decades drifting on the tides. His first book in thirty years, Tides at the Edge of the Senses, is an elegiac tribute, tinged with surreal imagery, to fishing, gillnetters, the fishing community on this coast and to the fish. He knows that world intimately but is never romantic about it; too much discomfort, fear, boredom, and accident.
Sartre of the chuck, Skapski proffers salty sutras on being and non-being. "Tomorrow is only one permutation of yesterdays."; "Things are what they are, and also what thought would have them be."; Though he has a weakness for abstractions, (life, death, always, never), Skapski's best pieces are short and imagistic. "The words lay beached on the air / Stretched like kelp on its dry frames."; "Thunder like a cat, rubs its back along the air.";
There is a lot of death in this book. Not only the decay/spawn life cycle of salmon but also the constant reminder of the men who have drowned. He's philosophical, too, about the demise of that fishing culture, blaming no one, but the affectionate memories are tinged with regret. Though he has had a love/hate relationship with the lifestyle, he's also clearly been hooked.
978-0-9781865-6-2
--review by Hannah Main-Van Der Kamp
[BCBW 2008] "Poetry"
Submitted on September 5, 2008 in By David.
