The Wave-Maker: Poems

by Elizabeth Spires

A contemplative, witty new collection from a "jewel of a poet" ( Los Angeles Times ). In Elizabeth Spires's sixth collection of poetry, the pilgrim soul, in its various guises, meditates on its own slow becoming, finding humble companions in creatures as unlikely as a lowly snail, a prehistoric coelacanth, or a tiny Japanese netsuke of a badger disguised as a monk. For Spires, life is both a pilgrimage and a deepening―birth, death, and transformation all part of a seamless continuum. Possessed of a calm, crystalline sense of eternity, her poems invite fellow travelers to sit for a little while and be cleansed of the dust of existence.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2008

About the author

Elizabeth Spires is the author of five collections of poetry as well as several books for children. She has been the recipient a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1998 she received the Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Maryland Author Award from the Maryland Library Association. Her poems have been featured on National Public Radio and have appeared in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The New Criterion, and in many anthologies, including Contemporary American Poetry (7th edition) and The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. She lives in Baltimore with her husband, the novelist Madison Smartt Bell, and their daughter, and is a Professor of English at Goucher College where she holds a Chair for Distinguished Achievement.







Now the Green Blade Rises (2002)

>> read " 'In Heaven It Is Always Autumn' "





Worldling (1995)

>> read "Truro," "Worldling," and "Celia Dreaming"

Also by Elizabeth Spires

- Annonciade
- Swan's Island
- Globe

Editor

The Instant of Knowing: Lectures, Criticism, and Occasional Prose of Josephine Jacobsen

Books for Children

- The Mouse of Amherst
- I Am Arachne
- Riddle Road

Reviews

[Tatum Cox · Rating 2 out of 5]

very imaginative and interesting, not my favorite style of poetry but still good to read.

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not a fan of Spires's style. Her poetry frequently features repetition, which makes it seem bland and almost childish. I don't like most of her narrative poems because they are overly-wordy and uneventful; they read like mediocre prose with line breaks. I also find her to be gimmicky at times. For example, two poems about snails using w e i r d    s p a c i n g and, later, another poem about a snail using

weird
line
b
 r
  e
   a
    k
     s
      !

There's a poem about rocks that uses only monosyllabic words (except for the final word) and a three page poem called "Sims: The Game a popular computer game explained by a child" which, unfortunately, is exactly what it sounds like.

Aside from that, Spires mostly writes about tiny creatures—crickets, robins, snails—and death. Some of her figurative language is imaginative and her poems about death are so matter-of-fact that they are poignant. There are a few poems I admired but otherwise I'm not a fan of this collection.

Poems that I liked:
"Badger Disguised as a Monk," "Nightgown," "Grey Garden," "A Grave."

=4/35 (11.4%) poems that I liked.

[Elevate Difference · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Elizabeth Spires' poetry collection, The Wave-Maker, presents a single image, it is something deceptively simple, like the flick of a blouse hanging on a clothesline. Difficult subject matter such as death, aging, and the meaning of life are examined by peering in to closely examine the minutiae. Here, life is made up of the smallest of things: the snowy hill, the snail's shell of a home, and how everyone needs a "a place to be quiet in."

Spires's poems are spare and airy. In "Story of a Soul," light enters a room where the "journal is deliberately cryptic." Like the windows the speaker wipes clean, this collection's poems are streamlined until they "everything is immaculate." The smallest of details are made mystical: the courage of a snail teaches something the speaker is not quite sure of, a white room suggests existence or lack thereof, and the tenacious bamboo in the midst of a thirsty backyard is in need of the speaker's hand. The Wave-Maker is bold because it asks what will happen once we leave. It is brave because it heeds to the present as much as it hints or recounts the past.

One of the best poems in the book focuses on the popular computer game The Sims. Spires retells the game as "explained by a child." Deceivingly simple statements make for a sharp poem full of meaning. Spires writes how "you design the people" and "adults don't have to have jobs they can cheat: / push the rosebud & money appears." Clear cut definitions of concepts like 'family' and 'love' shake readers into considering what is real or true. Spires writes, "a family is anyone who lives in the house with you," and "If you have Free Will you can starve or drown yourself / then you wander around as a ghost." Such details are chilling when considering the realities we form for ourselves.

Sadly, some of the lean lines seem brittle, as if the marrow has been sucked clean along with the flesh. All of the watching and observation sometimes results in a stagnant feeling. A line like "Foolish or true, the rose blooms only for you" seems too basic and loud for such a smart poet, and the poems' questions seem too obvious for such a subtle collection.

The Wave-Maker shows there is no beginning or end to the world. Instead, the wind comes or it does not. Meaning is brief and subjective. Spires's poems are careful waves that will wash over the reader, carrying him or her into poetry-centered meditation. We are all pallbearers, and we are all heroes. We can understand that we are all "a shell / a monument / a memory."

Review by Lisa Bower

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You and I, we live in depths profound and ceaseless,
we swim against cold currents until, netted

and gasping, we are shocked to find out
not what we are, but what we have never been."

from "Coelacanth"

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am loving this book. The language of the poems is accessible, but still holds many layers. This is a book I plan to enjoy reading and re-reading.

[AC · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection that sometimes falls flat, other times works well, but often just breaks even.