Notes Above Water: Selected Poems

The poems in NOTES ABOVE WATER are concerned with the lives of suburbanites and their secret sufferings-alienation, boredom, infertility, and infidelity. Reoccurring family members are threaded through the book, particularly dysfunctional parents who seem oblivious to the pain they're inflicting on their kids. There's excruciating conflict between the narrator and June Spoon, an ice queen narcissist jealous of her children's relationships and marriages. And Dadio, who rarely spares the rod, uses his offspring to vent his frustrations as a high-powered attorney. The abusive past haunts the narrator as an adult, where he struggles with self-flagellation trying to make his marriage work.

There's beach poetry set in Hawaii and the coastal city of Oceanside, California. The alienation theme continues on the sand and beachfront parking lots, where surfers molest underage girls in vans and beachgoers kill boredom with booze and music. In the end, after a long day of sun, west coasters return to their cars and trucks feeling as isolated and alone as when they first sunk their beach umbrellas into the sand.

Dark humor abounds, such as the narrator trying to coax his sister out of isolation by insisting there's no reason why she can't maintain her reclusive lifestyle even while be hitched; he points out the bonus of catered meals whipped up by her chef of a husband. There's hope too in these poems-the narrator gets a crush on the girl with the green violin and fantasizes about living with this sexy fiddler in an Irish cottage overlooking the sea.

Wright gives his poems plenty of space on the pages, allowing them room to breath. This creates a more intimate space between reader and poet, as if you're reading intimate notes scrawled in a journal. Lots of experimentation with form in this book, including pantoums, flash, prose poetry, couplets, and quatrains. A great read for the poet in us all.