Oceanic

February 15, 2018

Multi-award-winning poetNezhukumatathil (Lucky Fish) writes sharp poems that internalize nature and make its voice palpable, using lyrical language to reconnect us with nature's inhabitants and investigate their relationship with humans, personally and culturally. To do so, she often uses simple but alluring imagery in a reportage style: "Whales the color of milk have washed ashore/ in Germany, their stomachs clogged full/ of plastic and car parts." There is a tremendously vivid passage in which the poet captures in cinematic shots the inner wailing of an elephant: "When a companion/ dies, I believe in the rocking back/ and forth, the dry pebble tongue./ I believe in wanting to wear only/ dust, hear only dust, taste only dust." Nezhukumatathil here exploits brilliantly the inherited elegiac connotation carried by the word dust to depict a heart-wrenching mourning scene. Her sensory and dynamic depiction of nature can find some affinities with poems by Mary Oliver. VERDICT Reading Nezhukumatathil's poems is a practice in keenly observing life's details. The poet writes with a romantic sensibility about a world saturated with a deep sense of loss. Recommended for all poetry readers, especially those interested in ecopoetry.--Sadiq Alkoriji, Broward Cty. Lib. Syst., FL

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February 19, 2018
“Every thicket has/ a secret and/ every mighty beast/ has a soft underside,” writes Nezhukumatathil (Lucky Fish); it’s something of a thesis for this book, in which she marvels at existence in a sprawling and miraculous world. Her poems invoke a sense of connectedness with similar animal species (“the movement we make when/ we wake, swiping hand or claw or wing across our face”), while also reminding readers of what there is to glean even from wildly different creatures: “A snake heart can slide up and down the length of its body/ when it needs to.” Nezhukumatathil weaves meditations on parenting and family-making among her lavishly rendered evocations of flora and fauna. In the love song “Penguin Valentine,” a male penguin waits for his partner in the dark, incubating their egg: “During those days of no sun, does he/ remember the particular bend// of his mate’s neck, that hint of yellow/ near her ears?” Considered together, Nezhukumatathil’s poems ponder the nature of home, both in terms of individual lives and of broader human existence. “I have been studying the word home,/ as if studying for a quiz, trying to guess/ answers to questions before they are asked,” she writes. The collection’s mix of free and formal poems strikes different moods, but throughout Nezhukumatathil’s voice is consistent in its awe.