LIGHT IN THE RIVER

Garrison’s latest poetry collection tackles a range of topics from animal companionship to grief.

The book begins with a fable (“And Dog Said”) in which God creates Dog first, and only then creates Man to serve as his companion. God offers Dog the following word of caution regarding Man: “He has only a few words / like come and fetch, / and he knows little / of the earth / and its redolence, / but let him totter along / behind you and learn.” These attributes—tottering, learning, and speaking a few words here and there—recur throughout Garrison’s collection, which explores the complexities of aging and the sublimity of articulation at length as well as the relationship between people and dogs. The speakers marvel at the magic of small things, such as the intimacy of helping a woman zip a dress closed or the camaraderie of cancer patients sneaking off to share a nighttime smoke in a hospital parking lot: “The rasp / of a match or the click / of a lighter are passwords, / and no outsiders can shame them” (“Rasp”). There are odes to doorknobs, condoms, Scotch whisky, and the habits of men in their 70s—quotidian things that seem suddenly surreal when examined with poetic attentiveness. Cancer comes to dominate the later works, though Garrison finds unexpected avenues to approach it. One poem begins, “I go into a panic / when a Hollywood mogul dies / of the same cancer I have” (“Putting Killers Away”). A middle section features poems that grapple with the writing of poetry, and a final series of elegiac works confronts the concept of oblivion with a mix of grace and bewilderment.

Over the course of this collection, Garrison presents a style that has an understated lyricism—one that’s neither abstruse nor overly conversational. One poem, “Chromatics,” reads in its entirety: “Black notes / on gray staves / of oak and ash, / grackles gather. / Measure by measure / they line the branches, / inscribing / their dark music.” The poems are mostly free verse, though there are several written as sonnets or other forms, with many referencing classic poets such as Ovid, Robert Burns, John Keats, or Robert Frost. There are a few moments in the book where the poems get a bit saccharine, as in the commencement speech–like “What To Pack” or a work of praise of the eponymous poet in “Langston Hughes.” More often, though, the poems succeed because of their great restraint, as in the standout “Sousa March on the Radio.” Equally impressive is Garrison’s ability to encapsulate a broad, nebulous relationship in a tight little stanza: “I wear my father / like a handed down overcoat. / It fits better now that I am / old enough to know what is him / and what is me” (“Overcoat”). Indeed, it’s likely that readers will find themselves wearing a few of these poems around for a long time.

A mature, memorable collection of poems about aging, dying, and living.