Soft Water by John Coletti

In a poem about three-quarters of the way through Soft Water, John Coletti writes:

 

that poetry is psychic is no new concept

though it continues to surprise me

 

What’s satisfying about Soft Water is its use of “no new” features of poetry—caesura and line breaks, done with musicality—to still surprise and arouse emotion. 

 

If this sounds cheesy, it’s probably because contemporary poetry trends toward ironic detachment and cynicism. That attitude is appropriate, given the world as it is. (As if in acknowledgement of this state of affairs—the grim state of the world, that is—Coletti writes:

 

I meant this poem to be gentle

the source of perfect wisdom

though gentle times / these are not)

 

However, Coletti still writes lines like:

 

I lay awake beside you restful and holding your hair

saw my breath burn. It made me feel young

autumn air

 

The line break that transitions the abstract “feel young” to the concrete (but ephemeral) “autumn air” is an example of how Coletti uses “surprise” to arouse emotion. Here, it is a complex mixture of melancholy, romance, beauty, and awakening that is articulated. That complexity is fostered specifically by the pace and space line breaks afford. Using line breaks like this is “no[t] new,” but it is moving.

 

Speaking of line breaks and transitions between thoughts, it was interesting to question whether specific lines in the poems were enjambed or not. In the preceding, did the speaker see their breath burn while “lay[ing] awake beside” the other person, or is this another event entirely? And, in the following lines, is the speaker “sporting” as opposed to “competitive,” or is “sporting” what they are doing with “life”? Is the “spy plane / on byways,” or is “on byways, warblers” an image distinct from “life in a spy plane?”

 

I’m not that 

competitive. I’m sporting

life in a spy plane

on byways, warblers

still beautiful while it remains possible (p. 15)

 

Soft Water has the somewhat unusual dimensions of 8.5” x 7.” The 8.5” accommodate the book’s longest poem (33 lines), while the 7” accommodates its longest line:

 

sketch portraits of Jesus as Jesus burps in musical signature with a fit so alarming days

 

The line comes from “Centaur Inferno” and continues:

 

my dude. I agree

& miss you both a great deal. I saw a pond

canoes on the Tiber

funny, aspirational changes in yr character

making quesadillas w/ old cream cheese

mushrooms on the river

lazy chlorine

 

Reading these lines, “centaur” feels like an apt description. After all, spoken phrases without antecedent (“I agree / & miss you both a great deal”), testimony of seeing a pond, a concrete image of a river scene, an observation of how you’ve changed, “quesadillas w/ old cream cheese,” “mushrooms,” and chlorine (which belongs in still another body of water) are all grown together. 

 

These disparate pieces may allude to something like the speed and the variety of content of perception, demonstrating how consciousness moves between language, sense, and more. The measure of Coletti’s poem absorbs the disparateness—just as it absorbed “your hair,” “my breath burn,” and “autumn air”—and transforms it into music: 

 

I don’t really think 

about the order of 

the cones I handle 

the bingo drum

 

Coletti uses periods like caesuras throughout Soft Water (another way he creates “thought-centaurs” and/or mystery regarding the connection between adjacent clauses), one example of which reads:

  

understanding has its joys. though it's often overrated

 

The “music” doesn’t overthink the order of the poem nor pass judgment on the thoughts as they arrive, because—to say something else that is “no[t] new”—too much understanding of the poetry’s “surprise” can defeat the emotions it otherwise arouses. In response to the overly analytical mindset, Soft Water opts to not take itself too seriously, appearing to even make fun of its highly stylized use of line breaks to foster surprise in lines like:

 

I think I'm starting to get some feeling back

in my face

a different puckishness

 

Plus, too much philosophical parsing can land you at a point where you are questioning whether 

 

not every meal can be from Stewart's, but

 

is a complete thought, or the juncture between two. 

 

Ultimately, the overall flow of the music is the important thing, its centaur-mixture of high, low, image, dialogue, and so on resulting in gentle and emotional poems like:

 

Bent Light

 

Just ate a Twix Bar

& stacked its wrapper

on top of Blaise Cendrars

the snow in my body

high up in the frigid brittleness

of constraint just sit

drink biscuits on the Ficus

in the cartoon I made of

ice dust and pieces of us

but here in the bells

someone confident, hiding

imperfect flowers

the Scotch tape romances

I see beside you

collect leaks in the ceiling

wasting wounds, mine

grown over

 

In a poem from the last quarter of the book, Coletti writes:

 

a better way of being

if there is, I'd surely love to know

 

Soft Water doesn’t advance any new concepts, happily creating music that is gentle and surprising. Very refreshing.

Buy it here.