The Waters Under the Earth

Canon Press, September 2005. Paper Back. New. In Robert Siegel's verse, alligators 'gather like an idea / on the calm waters,' blackbirds chatter 'before heading on / like punctuation scattered to the clouds / floating in a long sentence across March.' In the poem 'Daddy Long Legs,' a spider is a Martian robot and 'the careless aunt whose hair strays / over a face pregnant with black-eyed susans / and fresh currant berries / with babies and poems that flew away in the garden.' Most every poem of Siegel's carries in it that sense of deliciousness and discovery. Not unlike a cow and her cud, Siegel ruminates on all manner of creatures and subjects, patiently chewing and digesting. It's clear he wants to get to the essence of things, but one gets the wonderful sense that he's also having a good bit of fun. Those familiar with Carmen Bernos de Gasztold's <i>Prayers from the Ark</i> (sadly out of print) will find Siegel to be a worthy, though slightly less devotional successor. His poems lack de Gasztold's arresting naiveté but carry in them the same winsomeness and a pleasing punch of modern complication. But lest I misrepresent, <i>The Waters Under the Earth</i> isn't just a book of animal poems; Siegel's range covers Arthurian legend, New Testament parables and the weather in South Dakota. His poem 'Carrying the Father,' affectingly secures this collection, its last lines a thesis for what feels to be the abiding premise of Siegel's work: <i>Do not forget the dark / dear past from which all the shapes come, the rich / drift and sleep of leaves over and over, / this soil ever crumbling / in which you lay the still invisible garden.</i>