Water Sings Blue: Ocean Poems

The creatures and allure of the sea are captured in twenty-three poems with as many moods as the sea itself. Some give a nod to the familiar: with its lilting cadence and yearning to set sail, "Song of the Boat" recalls John Masefield's "Sea Fever"; "Prayer of the Little Fish" voices sentiments like those in Carmen Bernos de Gasztold's Prayers from the Ark. Here are succinct comical entries ("The sea urchin fell in love with a fork..."); wry imagery ("Octopus Ink": "He autographs the water / with a single word -- / good-bye"); and apt thoughts ("Sand's Story": "Now we grind and we grumble, / humbled and grave, / at the touch of our breaker / and maker, the wave"). Such waves pulse through a pleasing variety of images and ideas, with only an occasional lapsed meter or odd word choice (a shipwreck under "gallons of seas"). So's illustrations are splendid, their liquid sweeps of watercolor evoking the sound, the pace, the smell of sea and shore. One spread, composed of seven vignettes, is a revelation of possible ocean shapes, colors, and behaviors -- and of diverse ways to represent them. Shark, sea turtle, coral, or whale, So's creatures are all engaging; but it's the ocean itself that stars in her beautiful art, whether in translucent underwater greens, intense blue against a dazzling white horizon, or simply as splashes of color and light. joanna rudge long