God and I, earth and sky, and family are all-significant in Scott Ferry’s book of poems, Sapphires on the Graves (Glass Lyre Press, 2024). A book of prose poems stylistically void of capital letters, the lower case g for God, complemented by the lower case i, suggests poetry is more about questions than answers. Ferry’s lower case g suggests the secular, an entity in the universe, a creator of all or nothing. His lower case i connotes we; he writes from a personal standpoint with a clarity and conciseness that objectifies the poems; their beauty, vitality, and wonder becomes his readers’. The astute reader is stuck by their originality.
God in the context of these poems suggests who, what, when, where, why and how; mortality measured against infinity. A source of the poet’s wonder. “i take pictures of clouds but none of them capture the immense weight or the lifting / every time i pass the corner i search for the limping dog without any faith that i will find any faith” (3). The book’s title stems from the conclusion of “sparkle,” a poem which begins: “there was a time when i wouldn’t notice the flash and weft of sun on water / back when I didn’t need to notice god in the wind” (12). God lies in our perception of sun, wind, water, and the limping dog; god lies in the self. God lies “below all the connecting waters breathing heavily against their pillows / below my ideas of magnetism and waveform and grace” (15). “name” begins “i didn’t come here to this place to explain who i am / I couldn’t tell you anyhow” (16). The place is the poem, and the poem “god” begins “and the endless patience is what i pray for” (21). The poet suggests god is the source of our inner resources.
Earth and sky are literal in these poems. When Ferry talks about earth, he’s talking about soil, rocks, and roots, growth from the soil and replenishment from the wind, rain, and bodies of water. The second part of “guam” begins “along the road and under the roots the oxisol bears red like a birth / and the sudden rain like a flood of birth” (2). Oxisol is a soil found in the tropics. The sense of birth and life-affirmation is sustained in the first half of “bio.” “i stand at the edge of the forest and wait for all of the language to breathe itself quiet / the leaves flutter and cool air settles into the places cut by water” (11). Things, creatures, and people settle, in varied ways. There’s a dream-like, surreal aspect to many of the poems, balanced by a steadfast knowing that where the poet lives, and where we live is between earth and sky, and both are sources of wonder. “sometimes I listen to the voice which prods at me / it says go outside” (43). Standing on the deck outside his house, he calls for his daughter to come out. Together they (and we) observe the sky. She “says it looks just like a painting / pointing to the distant peaks beyond the trees / to the opening lungs of the sky / to the thunder storms off to the south gathering ochre on their billowing limbs” (43).
This poet is a dreamer, and a family member whose greatest reality is his family: wife, son, daughter. Familial love is The light in this book, their delight in, and affection and concern for one another. They are depicted doing things together. In Guam, “my son and i navigate the saltholes and shallows around the headlands by the beach bar and hotel row” (7). “gift” begins with “i have given my daughter the curse of thinking” (19). And concludes, “i hope her demons are kind to her / that they adopt her / that they become the faint ghosts i now hear in the walls” (19). “holding,” a love poem of striking originality, is well worth quoting in its entirety. In the middle of it, husband and wife are together. “i hold her body and we both stop surviving for a moment and meld into each other / and the music of the planets swings us up slow weighted and tilting with the squeeze of gravity and the sway of tides and timeless cycling moons” (18).
Sapphires on the Graves is a continuum of books of prose poems written in the latter half of the twentieth century by Russell Edson. While Edson’s poems are predominately humorous, Ferry’s are not without humor, but very different. Humor has its place amid Ferry’s wonder, and gratitude. “guam,” which begins the book, is a metaphor for his world. He comes up from a swim in “tumon bay” (5), to a shore shaded by a palm tree. “and I stand there under it wondering why I deserve entrance here / and how long will i allow myself to float painless in this temporal paradise before re-entering the throat of noise and thorn” (5).
—About the author—
Peter Mladinic’s most recent book of poems, Maiden Rock, is available from UnCollected Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.
—AI Image Description—
A serene and somewhat eerie landscape of a graveyard with rolling hills. The scene is depicted in shades of black, gray, and blue, giving it a watercolor effect. Numerous tombstones with crosses are scattered across the hills, some in the foreground and others fading into the distance. Bare trees with thin branches stand among the graves, adding to the somber atmosphere. In the sky, a few birds are flying, enhancing the tranquil yet haunting feel of the scene. Tall grasses and plants are visible in the foreground, swaying gently as if moved by the wind.
Created with ChatGPT for this review of Sapphires on the Graves.
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