Rafting on the Water Table: Poems (Minnesota Voices Project)

By Susan Steger Welsh

As the title implies, these poems are concerned with exploring the implicit in our world, the common elements that nourish and connect us, things we may not understand until someone with great... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0898232023
• ISBN13: 9780898232028
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: New Rivers Pr
• Length: 69 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.3" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Check out this book from a 2001 MN Book Award Nominee

Rafting on the Water Table is a finely crafted, lovely, clear-thinking volume. "The wind has all the time in the world./ The sky goes on without you./ Do what the grasses do: keep thick/ your connections underground./ Then it's all right to give yourself over to fire./ You'll grow back from the base, surging/ from strong jolt of ash, grow into the wind/ headlong and blazing." (from "Prairie Meditations") These lines could have been written by James Wright. The reader comes away from this volume having learned something about experiencing the world. I look forward to future volumes from this poet.

Poems for the middle of the night

This is a strong debut by a promising poet. From the first poem to the last, Steger Welsh maintains a provocative voice that both engages and challenges the reader to look at the ordinary world and its "rules" in a new way. Whether she is dissecting grammar vis-a-vis God ("Grammar in the Kingdom of God") or exploring her own loss and grief through the rhythms of the natural world ("Laws of Falling Things"), this writer combines keen wit and grace to create deftly realized poems. She is particularly attentive to the natural world around her, the weather and trees and birds of her neighborhood, and uses her observations to create surprising and sometimes heartbreaking metaphors for love, marriage, loss, death. This book is a comfort and a joy to read. In her poem "Rapid Eye Movement", a meditation on dreams and their relation to reality, the last lines read: "On these waves come bobbing/coded ransom notes from the soul,/messages smuggled back to the dreamer, who in the morning, disbelieves." These poems are like those smuggled messages--illuminating yet mysterious, yielding more and more upon each reading.

Welsh's Rare Bits

From the first poem ("In Defense of Semicolons") you realize you're in the presence of someone who's grounded in the same world you are but has perfected the art of flight. These are smart poems, often surprising, always human, and beautifully crafted without shoving their artistry in your face. Whether she's exploring the troubling wisdom of her children, the disappearance of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the demolition of a city landmark, Welsh's writing moves us, makes us laugh, unsettles us in the way the best poetry sometimes does.

Wide range of warmth and wit, delightful and deep

This prize-winning volume, Welsh's first publication of her fine poetry, rewards the reader greatly. It takes up everything from family relationships to scientific advances. Deft, artfully crafted, smooth-flowing--I loved it. If you want good contemporary poetry in your personal library, this book is for you.

Vigorous, Perceptive, Intelligent

I enjoyed this collection very much. The writer brings new insight to familiar moments in everyday life, with language that's both accessible and layered. She describes moments of everyday joy in the context of their greater meaning, but her keen intellect prevents her from ever dipping into sentimentality. A vigorous, perceptive, intelligent voice. Highly recommended.