New Titles in Poetry

Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields
Author: Ashley Capps
Publisher: University of Akron Press
Paper $14.95 (69 p.)
ISBN: 1931968373
ISBN-13: 9781931968379
B&T         YBP


We throw live chickens into wood shredders, and slaughter harmless animals who have lived beside us for years and ought to be considered neighbors. In Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields, her debut collection, Ashley Capps finds pain at the intersection of Nature and Man's nature, one of her major themes, but she doesn't let angst consume her spirit or her poetry. Saving her is that she loves the look of the world, and finds joy in recording it with brilliant precision, as in these lines from "To the Dapple Critic":

You must never have been inside the orchard--
never seen the leopard

way light lay on apples
through their leaves.

You must never have bargained
on your knees in any church,

then stood to find the prismed round
a rose window flung at your feet.

We see Capps confront, in poem after poem, the gulf between what is and what’s right, and follow her as she looks for a way to bridge that gap, or at least measure it. She thrills and amazes us with her ability to create something out of the nothing that confronts her; it's a draw whether she comprehends the world best through her senses or through her sense of justice. These are poems that do not lose gravity when Capps steps away from literal imagery. “Washing the Brain” narrates surreal events as confidently as if they had occurred, and the confidence radiates from the truth the poem tells us. Similarly, “God Bless Our Crop-Dusted Wedding Cake” is an out-there title that captures the marriage described in the poem. Not much fun is had by the speaker in any of these poems, as mangled family relationships and torn love affairs testify, but then there is “What Constitutes a Proper Planet”, which is placed last—as if to show a little light at the end of the existential tunnel. Though their subject matter is hard, these poems are invigorating for their honesty and courage. Ashley Capps is a poet to watch.