Tidal by Amari Utomo
Publisher: Owenfield Press (2020)
Purchase @ Amazon
Purchase @ Amazon
Review by Patricia Joan Jones.
Tidal is a triumph of environmental awareness and striking leaps of language. In this important collection, Amari Utomo carries us along a current of mourning and profound connection to the genesis of all life on Earth: the sea.
We grieve with him for the irreplaceable treasures we have lost, and continue to lose, while he keeps us under the spell of his poetic voice that is both delicate and vast, ethereal and powerfully human, echoing the ebb and flow and moods of the waters we fear and cherish. The style as imagery pays homage to beaches and oceans so fragile in the hands of an individualist world.
In each poem there is room to meditate, with flashes of vivid observations that often float, miraculously, in the mind. In "Earth Dome" he writes:
Because I want you
behind the waves.
When the universe
is full of ripples.
Behind parallel lines,
her furious salts.
Over smothered flesh,
a whale shark
surfaces.
Though hypnotic, the words refuse to sit still, always pulsing with Utomo's oneness with the sea, so that we love Her as intimately and fiercely as he does, and he accomplishes this without preaching, but by allowing nature to speak for itself through a lens of free verse as smooth-textured as sea glass, as cunning as the ocean's secrets.
By the end of the collection, we are the waves, the reefs, the sand, the salt, and we care deeply about the ancient forces that connect all life.
Tidal is a triumph of environmental awareness and striking leaps of language. In this important collection, Amari Utomo carries us along a current of mourning and profound connection to the genesis of all life on Earth: the sea.
We grieve with him for the irreplaceable treasures we have lost, and continue to lose, while he keeps us under the spell of his poetic voice that is both delicate and vast, ethereal and powerfully human, echoing the ebb and flow and moods of the waters we fear and cherish. The style as imagery pays homage to beaches and oceans so fragile in the hands of an individualist world.
In each poem there is room to meditate, with flashes of vivid observations that often float, miraculously, in the mind. In "Earth Dome" he writes:
Because I want you
behind the waves.
When the universe
is full of ripples.
Behind parallel lines,
her furious salts.
Over smothered flesh,
a whale shark
surfaces.
Though hypnotic, the words refuse to sit still, always pulsing with Utomo's oneness with the sea, so that we love Her as intimately and fiercely as he does, and he accomplishes this without preaching, but by allowing nature to speak for itself through a lens of free verse as smooth-textured as sea glass, as cunning as the ocean's secrets.
By the end of the collection, we are the waves, the reefs, the sand, the salt, and we care deeply about the ancient forces that connect all life.
Patricia Joan Jones' poems have been published in several print and online publications, including Ancient Heart Magazine, Poetry Sharings Journal, The Baroque Review Magazine, Voices Magazine, Voices: Spirit of Strength, Orions Belt Magazine and The Coffee Faucet. Jones' work has received recognitions including: a Special Recognition Award for the 9th Voices Net Anthology International Poetry Competition, three nominations for the Net Poetry and Arts Competition (NPAC), and featured poet of Poetry Sharings Journal.
