Stones in Water

Mark Bastien was a Toronto-based journalist.

David Solway has been touted as one of the most important poets writing in Canada today. His earlier books, including Mephistopheles and the Astronaut and The Mulberry Men, have promised great things for his future. Stones in Water, Solway’s eleventh book of poems, should establish him as a major force to be reckoned with in Canadian poetry.

In this collection, Solway writes about his stay on the Greek island of Alonissos. He is fascinated with the sea and the life that inhabits it; his poems document this fascination in haunting, witty, and often beautiful terms. In Solway’s poems jellyfish, lobsters, snakes, and octopi become compelling and complex creatures. Even less exotic beings — hornets and wasps — are transformed by the author’s expansive yet intricate vision of nature. In “The Hornet-Fly” a hornet devours a wasp:

I watch the hornet-fly get down to work

and with its narrow hypodermic

pump its julips into furry zones —

secret oils and intimate secretions —

its front legs moving in a strange caress,

a species, it might seem, of tenderness.

The beach at Alonissos is a swirling, erotic wonderland.

There is not a single poem in Stone in Water that is not satisfying. The author’s craftsmanship is dazzling. I could pick any of a number of poems in this volume as my favourite, but I especially liked “How It Happens,” “Five Sounds,” and “The View from Alonissos.”