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The Wave That Did Not Break
Jonathan Harris' poems are lovely and musical. This dialogue between son-poet and deceased mother-poet has the poignancy of a medieval ballad or an American song, maybe one of those Sixties songs with a refrain like 'Meet You in the Falling Rain, Mama.' One also thinks of a love unrequited, Tennessee Williams and Emily Bronte, Edgar Poe or Virginia Wolfe walking into the river--Joseph Millar.
79 pages, Paperback
First published September 18, 2010
13 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Harris
137 books4 followersLibrarian Note:
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There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 24, 2013
WARNING: TSUNAMI!!!
Okay, so it's not a tsunami. What Jonathan Harris achieves here is much more subtle than that. And rather than try to carry on with a silly analogy, I'd like to attempt to explain what makes this book so special. I had the feeling while reading THE WAVE THAT DID NOT BREAK that I was eavesdropping on a very private conversation. One I probably shouldn't have been listening to, but one I couldn't pull myself away from either.
"Because he was going blind, he found ways
to fool the untrained eye, but never mine.
I missed nothing--unzipped zippers, socks worn
inside out, crumbs on his penny loafers--
and later I watched him follow my voice
around the living room, as if the air were honey."
As you read this book, you find yourself aching. Aching for the little boy left without a mother, for the sister-turned-mother, for the father left to raise his children alone whose "...vision dulled/and his three sons became like floaters/orbiting the rims of his milky eyes."
You ache and smile through the tears welling up because the conversation you are listening to is that tender, that sweet.
Okay, so it's not a tsunami. What Jonathan Harris achieves here is much more subtle than that. And rather than try to carry on with a silly analogy, I'd like to attempt to explain what makes this book so special. I had the feeling while reading THE WAVE THAT DID NOT BREAK that I was eavesdropping on a very private conversation. One I probably shouldn't have been listening to, but one I couldn't pull myself away from either.
"Because he was going blind, he found ways
to fool the untrained eye, but never mine.
I missed nothing--unzipped zippers, socks worn
inside out, crumbs on his penny loafers--
and later I watched him follow my voice
around the living room, as if the air were honey."
As you read this book, you find yourself aching. Aching for the little boy left without a mother, for the sister-turned-mother, for the father left to raise his children alone whose "...vision dulled/and his three sons became like floaters/orbiting the rims of his milky eyes."
You ache and smile through the tears welling up because the conversation you are listening to is that tender, that sweet.
Displaying 1 of 1 review