Thirst, reviewed by David Chorlton

Thirst, by Patrick Carrington, Codhill Press, www.codhill.com , 2007, 32 pp, $10. ISBN I-930337-26-4. Reviewed by David Chorlton.

From the opening line in the first poem (LEARNING HISTORY IN NURSERY SCHOOL) of this chapbook, in which “rain slid down on silk ropes,” to the “wet rings on pine” the speaker made as he “mumbled/in shadowed booths” in the last (FRESH LIGHT), Patrick Carrington’s sense of touch and texture illuminates the events he recalls. It is in details like the neighbor who “snores/like a lawnmower” (THE LOGIC FOR IMPROVING A NEIGHBORHOOD), that he effectively adds highlights as one might in paintings.

Another characteristic of THIRST is the author’s examination of religion, which leads us more toward abstraction, as in “I had always thought it complicated,/becoming holy.” (FIRST LESSONS IN GRACE) Spiritual introspection is part of looking back on childhood in this poem, with its air of family confession in “the wine bruises/he gave my mother,” and the well stated notion that “the ticket to forever might be more/along the lines of an ample supply/of 100-watt bulbs.”

I come away from these poems with the sense of having been in the company of someone whose idea of divinity depends on what he can see and connect with at ground level. The water that slakes this particular Thirst may have a calm surface, but it sparkles and isn’t shallow.