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Confluences: A Collection of Poems
by Gari Light
53 Poems ~ 3 Illustrations ~ 112 pages
Original photography, by Gari Light
Cover Photography, by Anya Korolyova
Design & Layout, by Yulia Tymoshenko
Cover Design, by Larisa Studinskaya
Price: $14.99 Publisher: Bagriy & Company
In Cooperation with Kayala Publishing, Silver Spring, MD
ISBN #: 978-1-7344460-0-5
To Order: Amazon
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
When reviewing a book, I seldom recommend that readers begin at the end! First time for everything. My research began on page 96. There I encountered, Sergey Elkin’s “A Conversation with Gari Light.” Elkin’s Q & A, conducted in 2018, reveals an incredibly complex and talented man. Fluent in Russian, Ukrainian, and English, Gari Light’s poetry is respected in America and abroad for its linguistic precision and depth of insight, particularly as it engages in the political and social realities in play in Russia, Ukraine, and the wider European context. Gari’s poetic oeuvre is best summed up in Tatiana Retivov’s Foreword to Confluences:
Gari Light could be described as a trilingual, contemporary American poet, based primarily Chicago, yet his outlook and the subjects of his writings are truly interconnected and global.
I recall my high school geography class where we learned, in our study of rivers, that the Monongahela and the Allegheny rivers (Pittsburgh) meet and create the mighty Ohio! I don’t believe my teacher used the term “confluence,” but I retained the idea. In Light’s poetry the metaphor is extended to refer to a confluence of ideas, cultures, events, and interests which merge, forming something new, fresh, and profound.
Confluences is organized into three untitled sections of 20, 17, and 16 poems, respectively. While the poems in each section stand alone, each section contributes its own distinctive take on Light’s subject.
The volume opens with “We Haven’t Walked Those Sands.” The poet’s heart is heavy as he chronicles the desert of oppression where:
The truly good and kind were no longer the preferred choice,
just as that old feeling of empathy wasn’t missed when it vanished
into the morning dawn ocean, leaving no reflections at all.
The poem goes on to develop dark themes of corruption amidst looming political turmoil. Yet, in the very articulation of truth, I sense hope on the horizon. Turning the page I meet, “A brighter ray of sharp perceptions comes to life.” Introduced by a Leonard Cohen epigraph: The odds are there to beat,
The year before Prague witnessed Russian tanks,
apparent spring succumbed to winter’s echo,
our parents braved the cold (so many thanks!).
Light is not a slave to propounding “confluence” in obvious ways, as if taking it prisoner within each poem. Rather, as in the poems noted above, his theme blends one poem into the next. Light’s work forms connective tissue as coming together resides, as a welcome guest, throughout the collection.
Moving into Section II, a tone is set by a photograph of a river steeped in gray fog. The fog cloaks a bridge, half-seen, spanning the water. “Cinematique” leads the way. Light employs “Cinema” to segue into a world that would be better than it is, if not for the fog of oppression. Metaphorically speaking, the couple is:
Symbolic
in the way he holds her hand … she smiles …
A panorama of the crossing in Berlin, Donetsk or Sarajevo …
In “A Solo for the Morning Snow,” Light takes on the challenges involved with creative writing. This important poem is also introduced with an epigraph by Leonard Cohen: “And sometimes when the night is slow … / You lose your grip and then you slip / Into the masterpiece …”
For Gari Light, writing in a world which resembles the “half-seen bridge,” life shrouded in fog, poetic process is paramount if he is to reach the hearts of his audience without burying that audience in despair. This is the genius of Gari Light’s body of work.
All efforts to create in real time
a masterpiece would definitely fail,
as inspiration does not get to become
incarnate from Neverland,
yet there may be a single instance,
where such a premise may cast a doubt–
and that is when the last exclamation
of December floats by your window.
Though I sense the poet’s heavy heart, he does not let its weight rule the day. Poets are visionaries of morning’s dawn; they tell the truth. To quote Dickinson: “Tell the truth but tell it slant.” Careful reading of Light’s body of work lets in a sliver of light to interdict the suffering of which he is so keenly aware.
Among the strengths of Confluences is Light’s use of the arts to drill down on his themes. Stage, dance, song, painting, and the natural world are all in play within this well-crafted collection.
For all Gari Light’s deep wisdom, for all his penetrating poems which hold to account the sufferings and injustices which permeate his poems, his heart of hearts is summed up in words I choose from the author’s foreword:
I deem this to be my biggest accomplishment: Dedicating this book to my parents–Gina and Boris, as well as to my wife Anya, is just a drop into the confluence of love and gratitude that I am fortunate to experience.
Amen, Amen, and Amen.
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