Sea Room

by Maria Flook

Sea Room is a navigational term meaning adequate space at sea in which to maneuver a ship. The term seems an incongruity - that something so open and deep should require such precise and careful charting. In these most specific and powerful poems, the poet maps areas of obsessive love, phobic illness, godlessness, the prism of sexuality and romantic instinct in which all things are reflected, distorted. There's a playful terror in Maria Flook's poems. Her animated word is full of signs and signals; she always finds the telling analogue or makes the figure which reveals, illuminated everyday perceptions. "Dreams have cruel motives. Sleep worries/ both the decent and the wicked/ who keep odd hours/ so I walked out." The poems search for reprieve, or a calm, in wronged lives. Any accusations are fully explored, recalled in forgiveness or apology for relationships long over.

Genres: Poetry

70 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1990

About the author

Maria Flook is the author of the novels Family Night (which received a PEN American/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Special Citation) and Open Water, as well as a collection of stories, You Have the Wrong Man, and a memoir, My Sister Life: The Story of My Sister's Disappearance. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The New Criterion, TriQuarterly, and More Magazine among others. She is a 2007 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award recipient, and is currently Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College in Boston. More information about Maria Flook can be found at www.mariaflook.net.

Reviews

[Anneliese Peerbolte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredibly full of potential. Much of this collection was so good. And some of it was just simply disappointing. Some of the work was just too blatant and on the nose, it felt more like a shock value of the topic rather than something really moving with the actual language. But, a lot of the work felt extremely moving and fulfilling. This is, of course, personal taste in what I find moving in a poem as a poet myself. I did enjoy reading this collection very much though.