Wave Says by K.M. English Kore Press, 2021 It is easy to lose one’s balance while floating on water, on a vessel where waves are in control of movement, of containment, of what becomes of the tethered and untethered. Balance is occasional and sometimes fleeting, too, in K.M. English’s debut collection Wave Says, where language finds its grounding in the unexpected. The syntax of each poem surprises, rises and falls, ebbs and flows like waves, and that might seem too easy a metaphor, but the poems are complex and rhythmical, sensory, and imagistic, in their imagining what it is like to be waves, to be the sea, a river, an ocean–how life is comprised of a multitude of waves made up of time, of light, of incidence. The title poem appears in the final section of the collection which is titled Breathtaken and is comprised of carefully crafted language emulating a wave and responding to its consistency in measured lines that move the eyes gently as waves might caress a shore in rhythmic expectancy. Tides move in and out, and in this poem, a wave speaks, letting us know ironically from the outset

The wave, relative to human behavior, is constant in its own sense of aloneness yet conscious of what it endures. It has a life, much like the one described in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves: “The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously.” Whether or not English drew inspiration from Woolf, the texts mirror and echo one another in thematic conversation if one is read closely following the other. The final title poem encourages a deeper consideration of questions of existence, being, and everything’s essential place and purpose on earth. English attends to light, sound, and movement in language that references both marine and celestial environments, giving voice to the wave that asks “Didn’t a // kind of well- / meaning tide give back to gentle earths?” The voice consciously wonders throughout the poem in images of sound, “some green oblivion,” or “of wonder and loot.” Laden with sensory imagery throughout, this poem beckons and bellows, asking the you of the poem to “consider the cruelty / of a labor with nothing held then no end, all change I / radiate / no surround no / mine to lose … Can you relate? Forget it.” Water, time, and sound ask the land to understand the environments from which they emanate, where they create worlds that humanity often ignores. Other poems in the collection also hold power in the language they use to convey human senses of observation, of relativity, and of purpose. In “Mother Orca Carries Stillborn Calf Over 17 Days and 1,000 Miles” English masterfully handles the language of grief transcending the story of the mother whale and her calf and extends it to include everyone who has ever grieved a loss and was not ready for it. The mammalian mother becomes a symbol of mourning, especially when “[she drops him, swimming] [tight circles] [6 breaths] [diving down]” and is placed within a belief system outside of her understanding

The white space and placement of text in this poem draw attention to the mother’s journey, her loss, and her acceptance. In an eerie companion piece farther into the collection, the poem “Lullaby” is a mother instructing her children how to deceive Death (a proper noun) when “Each night locks turned // we sing I’m not afraid to die.” It’s a trick, the speaker says while admitting “I am afraid of everything. / I cannot close my eyes.” The plight of another mother who cannot ignore or look away from death. Still other poems use punctuation and white space in varied and purposeful ways, employing parentheses, brackets, ellipses, and slashes that all play roles that enhance the language so that it emulates and (as close as possible) mimics waves and their properties. Lines of varied lengths and spaces between words, lines, and stanzas that might not be so easily defined by those words, congregate on the page in intervals in the spaces where they belong and where they are most useful. The repetition of phrases and parentheticals in “long waves these endless paths,” for example, emphasizes the power of waves over land and un-personifies them as knowledgeable entities and illuminates their force. In poems like “A Lasting Image” and “Event, Horizon” expectations of an approachable syntax are moved to the side to take in the words the poet has chosen for the page, to read for the intended meaning that might be elusive at first but then may lead to “a shadow to what was / available / this unconsumable sense / of still.” K.M. English takes us down a different path with each poem in this remarkable collection. Each poem opens up a new perspective, which harkens back to Woolf again in an exploration of how each viewpoint is clear to the one who perceives it, and works as a crucial measure of being and mortality. In the midst of the collection, at the end of the poem, “All These Bodies; Findings,” the poet concludes, “There is no other // motion to understand.” Occasionally unsure of our bearings in English’s poems, each language choice feels intentional, this push and pull of balance and possibility that accompanies so much of life. Visit K.M. English's Website Visit Kore Press' Website

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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