reviewed
by Michael Dylan Welch
North Lake by Ce Rosenow
(Hillsboro, Ore.: Mountain Gate Press, 2004). North
Lake by Ce Rosenow (Hillsboro, Ore.: Mountain Gate
Press, 2004). North Lake 72 pages, 5.5 x 8.5, perfectbound,
letterpress (by Swamp Press). ISBN 0-9643357-1-9.
$15.00 postpaid from the author at 815 E 28th Ave,
Eugene, OR 97405.
One can be drawn back to a book because it is a
thing of beauty a finely crafted object with
tactile effects from its paper stock, colors, and
weight. One can be drawn back to a book because
of the tone of the place to which it takes you
the feeling of satisfaction, contentment, or an
amplification of some lonely or exalted sense of
where you were, or were moved to, when you first
consumed the book. Ce Rosenows North Lake
is such a book, and it is easy to be drawn back
to North Lake is such a book, and it is easy
to be drawn back to North Lake it. It is
a finely crafted object, yes letterpress
refinements of laudable pleasure. The poems, too,
are finely crafted individual and sequenced
haiku that appear unassuming yet linger like a robust
wine on the tongue and in ones nostrils. One
feels not just the taste of individual poems but
the underlying and complex echoes from poem to poem
as flowers, birds, the moon, and water in various
forms reappear throughout the book made different
each time by the varying way in which objective
wind casts its subjective ripples.
the waters surface
broken
a fisherman casts in the rain
The word broken in this
opening poem from the Spring section slows the reader
down, not just for the sake of this poem, but for
the entire book. We are subtly brought to attention,
like the fisherman casting his line, as we break
the surface of the book by entering it. Yet is it
us as readers who have broken the surface, or is
the natural world already doing that, like the rain
upon the water, and we are merely there to witness
it? North Lake is a place in Washington state, a
little south of Seattle. It is where the author
grew up, a place that has shaped the poet,
as Phyllis Walsh says in the afterword. As Walsh
notes, Ce Rosenow is not only a sensitive
observer ... but interacts with the natural world
she inhabits. These poems are records of that
interaction, records, as Walsh also notes, that
take on the quality of rituals. The
sense of ritual arises from reverence and recurrence,
most prominently evidenced by water appearing in
more than a third of the books sixty poems.
wind in the pampas grass
the rowboat strains
against its mooring
cleaning trout
in the late day heat
blood beneath his nails
deepening with nightfall
waves
against the fishing boats bow
Rosenow quotes a poem by Cid Corman
to begin the Autumn section, in which he declares
that Water is a shrine. Indeed, we can
sense a reverence for water throughout this book,
and it extends to the way the common and everyday
is worshipped by each poem, regardless of subject.
Flowers and birds also recur prominently (each about
ten or so times). Here is one of each:
my yard
my neighbors yard
camellia blossoms fall into each
limbing the fir
eagles perch
falls to the ground
Yet, as shown by these two poems,
other themes recurin this case, falling, a
return to the earthbeyond the surface subjects
of flowers or birds.
The echo could be loss or absence,
as in these poems paired on the same page:
Christmas Eve
hanging her ornaments
without her
missing you
windows rattle
with the wind
Or the subject could echo after
a separation of many pages:
striking a match
to another candle
All Hallows Eve
power outage
vanilla candles
dripping wax
Or it could be the shape of the
poem that satisfies by judicious repetition:
crocus
bud
its
tremble
beneath
rain
drops
mini
a
ture
rose
dew
drop
on
its
petal
first
sky
stars
fad-
ing
into
dawn
Whatever the echoes, they often
lie beneath the surface of the poems objective
descriptions, and also echo within us as readers,
resounding with our own experience, our own memories
of time and place that are as personal for us as
North Lake is for Ce Rosenow. Fortunately, North
Lake is never too personal that we cannot enter,
and once within, the poems often compel us to plunge
well beneath the surface. As Phyllis Walsh observes,
The reader comes to feel North Lake is not
only an appealing place to visit in these haiku,
but to embrace in ones own inner space.
Enter this book once and you will be readily drawn
to enter it again to hear its complex echoes.
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