A Shape for Water

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta. He is
the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

Linda Waybrant’s book shows a garrulous imagination: nearly every poem
could be cut drastically. And the ampersands that afflict the poems
visually could be turned into “ands.” Paradoxically, these
overextended poems are written in brief, prosaic lines. Waybrant has a
long poem about the breakup of a marriage, which manages never to create
any drama. And the poem about an affair at a party, which ends with a
serious injury for one participant (he falls and smashes a glass table,
cutting open his arm), is not sexy or moving—or humorous. The story of
a boy who commits multiple burglaries never rises from the police
blotter into real human drama, though there are some social worker
explanations of his motives. The best poems in the book are the three
short ones set in Australia in Part 2. Here each poem is built to its
imaginative specifications, which are more modest than the sprawling
structures that begin the book.