Amazon.com Review by Chris Jarmick
Bertolino's masterful command of language, literary devices, and subtle internal rhymes make most poems in this collection as smooth and accessible as a Motown classic by Smokey Robinson. Nothing here has been over-worked into literary or academic obscurity.
I love Bertolino's insistence on clear concise communication. Read “In the Kitchen” and you'll understand from the first strophe : ”he overheard her saying something that sounded like `best dancer'” how his dry wit deepens the meaning and emotions of a poem without being too smart for the room.
I was not expecting that I would passionately enjoy most of the deceptively quiet poems in Bertolino's latest collection. I knew there would be meticulously crafted, constructed poetry by the former creative writing teacher. I was sure several poems would reveal his dry, wry sense of humor. I knew I would find a favorite or two that I would want to have a copy of; such as “Bloodying August Polito's Nose,” but I was not expecting to enjoy all 50 of the poems in this 80 page collection. After all, Bertolino has been publishing his poetry for over 40 years with about 10 books and 15 chapbooks to his credit. How much ”good stuff” does this Whacom County resident have in him?
The collection begins with “The Path of Water” and a quote from Ursula LeGuin: “Nothing can make water better.” ; and ends with a poem comparing the sun breaking through a cloud with the unbuttoning of a lady’s white blouse. In between, the words are the water we drink for survival and for pleasure. We taste, we savor. The water flows, the stones we hold.
There's no filler or laziness to be found on any page of this collection. I have at least a dozen favorites from the book and about three dozen runner ups. Pick up a copy of Finding Water, Holding Stone, and I suspect you'll be spending an afternoon in the near future, savoring Bertolino.
Review by Amy Schrader from Reading Local: Seattle
August 21, 2009
Delightfully Horrific
[ Finding Water, Holding Stone | James Bertolino | Cherry Grove Collections | Paperback $18 ] Initially, I imagined James Bertolino’s Finding Water, Holding Stone would dovetail all too neatly with my preconceptions about “poetry of the Pacific Northwest.” There is nature here, elemental imagery like…well, water and stone. There is ice and sand; there are blackbirds and wrens, crabs, caterpillars, lupine and saplings, clay, and an unwavering attention to darkness and light. There are the overtures toward the spiritual tropes that these iconic symbols suggest.
However, I found myself surprised by these poems time and again.
These are nature poems but there is very often a grounded scientific twist to balance the romantic pastoral. For example, in “Sun Worship” (was there ever a title that made you think of residents of the Pacific Northwest?), we learn a biology lesson about tent caterpillars:
If you see a chalky spot that glows
Against the dark of the forehead, it means
this supplicant has been chosen
by a wasp who’s laid an egg….
…it will hatch
and feed greedily on the sacrificial host.
Swollen then with such rich nourishment, such
spiritual fat, the young wasp will poke
a portal through… (23)
The nature here is fascinating and delightfully horrific in its own right, which gives the final spiritual gesture a little breathing room.
Bertolino’s poems are slippery; they allow for such breathing room throughout the entire book. There is a deft uncertainty to the language, especially in the first section of the book, “Finding Water.” This feels appropriate, as water’s fluidity and changeability matches this section’s preoccupation with “what is temporary and/in danger” (14). The poet makes no certain assertions, even with his figurative language:
…the marshy lowlands, fetid acres
that were a brown that moved, that seemed //
to undulate like the skin of an enormous snake… (18)
…heavy clouds seem to smother/ the islands… (21)
…When snow falls //
and a green mystery is carried
by all that moves… (29)
These poems are constantly changing, shifting in both shape and meaning. In “Flares”, which is hands down my favorite poem in the collection, the speaker tells us:
One of my gestures was, then wasn’t, //
then was…
…Sun flares make the world strange.
Something is changing shape,
and I’ve heard it’s my heart. (52)
The speaker cannot even refer to his own heart with any certainty; he must rely on rumors of what he’s heard. It is not until the last section of the book (”Having Stone”) that the poems take a turn toward what may be our only certainties: loss, violence, and death. The everyday is hard and dangerous. For example, even within the benign setting of “A Picnic Scene:”
Behind it all foliage is busy
practicing its fractal variations, sometimes
hiding, sometimes revealing
the splendid, unsheathed
talons. (57)
But even here, we cannot be sure of what threatens us. Danger is irregular, broken, sharply beautiful and—above all else—unpredictable. And this is exactly how James Bertolino’s poems strike me.
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Amy Schrader has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Washington. Her poems have been recently published or are forthcoming in The Fairy Tale Review, DIAGRAM, Filter, and RHINO. She lives in Seattle with her husband Chris and giant goldfish, Vlad the Impaler.
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