a review of:
Underground Rivers: Poems
By Peggy Shumaker
Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2002
Paper: $11.95 92pp.

To start with, Underground Rivers is a lovely book, its cover suggesting the deep rock formations in which underground rivers must run - but with a fringe near the spine which suggests the whole is perhaps a rug or quilt. Though it’s a paperback, the front and back covers extend to create a dust-cover effect which adds even more elegance, fitting both the appearance of the book and the quality of what’s inside. In short, this book is a pleasure to hold and read.

The poems inside are even more wonderful. These poems don’t merely explore nature, they invite us to become nature, as in these lines from “Too Soon After Rain”:

“After rain, blue woman//walks, each footprint an omen/shaped in earth, of earth, the mother/not gone. Long memory, that aroma//of death sprouting. Dark humus/feeding us, feeding on us and all others.” That shift from “dark humus feeding us” to “feeding on us and all others” places us firmly within the natural cycle - and content to be there.

The title poem, “Underground Rivers,” captures the essence of children playing in a dry arroyo: “Young ones scuff hardpan,//drag heels to mark walls -/make up houses where//they breathe the most death-/less breaths of their lives.” The line break which takes just a fraction of time to change “breathe the most death” to “breathe the most death-less breaths of their lives” twists the line’s meaning wonderfully.

The book’s first section is set in the desert country of the Southwest, where life can be harsh. Later in the title poem, a “dirt-shaped” man dozes in the arroyo, “dreams of the Wishing/Shrine where he prayed hard//and lit red candles/for his father to//stay always away/so the boy wouldn’t//have to kill him.” This is a land where one can feel, as in “Pantano Wash,” “our family heaped/like stones on our chests.”

Yet the poems are also full of nature’s quiet calm, as in “Owls’ Cough Balls”: “early morning chill of the snake nest,/coyote den, the burrows//of ground squirrels, the refuge/all creatures born of this earth//return to.”

In “Rio Santa Cruz, Arroyo Santa Cruz,” the river becomes a mad potter as it “carves/wet clay. This potter slips past, charges/and whirls, seeks the soul undammed./The arroyo by collapsing grows... .” Note the double meaning created by the spelling of “undammed” in that line. These poems repay careful attention with nuance after nuance.

Shumaker’s play with words and lines is one of the many delights of this book. In that same poem, she shapes and re-shapes the line “The arroyo by collapsing grows wide and large,//falls into itself.” The next version becomes “The arroyo by collapsing grows. Wide and large//the desert stretches.” This in turn shifts to “The arroyo by collapsing grows wide and large//as dreams still possible, desires unspoken.” And finally the line ends the poem by returning to what is not quite its original form: “The arroyo, by collapsing, grows wide and large.” Those added commas invite us to consider more fully this growing by collapsing.

Other sections of book are set in Alaska and Hawaii. As in the first section, there’s humor to be found in these poems, as in “Bear Plan, Brooks Range.” Sleeping in a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness, the poet’s murmured question “What’s our bear plan?” brings an unexpected reaction: “Han bolts awake - Bear Plan?//We have a bear plan?” and that seems to be the end of that night’s sleeping. After all, as they’ve approached the cabin that afternoon, they’ve noticed that “Something big/had been here,//big enough, say/ to rip away both boat shed//doors, to leave hinges/ bent into question marks...”

Alaska, of course, is a cold country, as we see in “Rime”: “Overnight, each twig has grown/white fur, the air so still/snow throws/into sharp relief each/branch plus/each branch’s crooked/light-bent sense/of self, crystallized.” Her observation of the natural world remains a delight - that a branch should have a “crooked light-bent sense of self” seems absolutely correct.

As in the earlier poems set in desert country, the Alaska poems are about people in nature. “Rime” becomes a love poem, “Last night, your voice/roused my limbs,” and love in turn becomes something which will “rise from hot springs/at the center of the sacred...”

Many of the Hawaiian poems deal with scuba diving, taking us into a world even more different from the desert country in which the book began. In “Dive,” we find “the surface of time/liquid, each breath/suspended..:” Now we’re in a place “Below human need” where “invisible/trails of sound echo/whale to whale.”

This strange undersea country is as dangerous in its way as the bears in Alaska. In “Camouflage” the poet is reminded, “anything/that will let you/touch it,//don’t.” In this world she can listen to whale songs, watch sea turtles swim overhead, “Translating every gesture/of beings better adapted/to be here.” Yet the poet herself is out of place, limited by her “finite air.”

Ultimately, these poems show a deep faith that “What will remain/has always remained -//water seized/by ice-driven air,//faith through hard cold/ that the languages//of marsh, sky/sandhill crane//will keep on/with us or without.”

Underground Rivers is a delightful book. Enjoy.

Underground Rivers is available at Bay Books in Freeland and The Moonraker in Langley.

A reformed fiddlefoot, Wayne Ude grew up in Montana, earned an MFA from UMass-Amherst, directed social services programs in Montana and Massachusetts, taught in and directed creative writing programs on the MA level for 17 years, and has published four books of fiction. Since 1993 he has lived, written, and taught on Whidbey Island.