cover image Ocean Effects: Poems

Ocean Effects: Poems

Brendan Galvin. Louisiana State University Press, $45 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8071-3266-1

Galvin (Habitat) may be known as a nature poet, but the real strength in this very readable volume lies in the people who speak through it, in the dramatic monologues, epistolary impersonations and modern folktales Galvin spins through the longer poems in the middle third of the book. Galvin is also a poet of the Atlantic-of Cape Cod, where he lives, of the seagoing Irish heritage, and of the harsh salt water and air. Most of the verse here reflects lives lived by the sea. ""These Little Town Blues"" tells entertaining stories in the voices of Massachusetts police who complain about the tourists, whom they call ""New Age lizards, washashores, blow-ins."" The long, ambitious, informative and ultimately moving ""Around Master Williams"" pursues American hopes and disappointments in the person and through the pen of Rhode Island's 17th-century founder: ""I speak of this Rhode Island drowning/ in disorders of our own creation,"" Galvin's version of Roger Williams complains. Lyric poems set in Labrador, the Faroe Islands and the wild spaces of contemporary America seem less original, but they too have their moments of obvious beauty: ""wild asparagus tall as a man one day,/ barely there the day before.""