Where Water Meets the Rock

Book excerpt: In her fourth collection of poetry, Where Water Meets the Rock, Lindsey Martin-Bowen explores loss and recuperation in three sections. “Erosion,” the book’s elegiac opening sequence, laments a trinity of tragic Greek personas: Pasiphaë, Psyche, and Antigone. The middle section, “Frenzies,” a series of zany poems, emulates the ensuing topsy-turvy world that follows deep loss. And finally, “On the Shore” completes the triad, concluding that by re-seeing and re-building life, one can heal the psyche and the spirit. Once again, through the use of her recurring sea-rock metaphor, Martin-Bowen has employed a poetic technique that effectively maintains both a visual and auditory descriptive style, which, according to New Letters editor Robert Stewart, is defined by her “refreshing reliance on imagery and understatement.”