What I’m Reading Now

THE OCEAN CANNOT BE BLUE, POEMS by Kirsten Hampton. Turning Point, 2019, www.turningpointbooks.com.

Detail from “One Drop” Rule

If there is         one

emerald         anchovy

darting in         the water

the ocean        cannot be blue

— Kirsten Hampton, The Ocean Cannot Be Blue

In truth, I read this book a while back — within days of a lovely afternoon tea when the author signed a copy and gifted it to me. This morning I’m rereading and appreciating the poems again for their agile wisdom, complexity, and artistry.

The Ocean Cannot Be Blue is comprised of 49 poems, some of which are in numbered parts that could stand alone, some of which are letters from the historic court case, Loving v. Virginia (1967), in which the Supreme Court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the 14th amendment. With this story as its spine, the book offers a lens into history, but also into the poet’s own marriage, and to all the ways families weave themselves together. One poem is about a whale displayed in the Caroline County Visitor Center (“Excavated 1991, 14 million years old”), and, later, these lines: “She is a case closed, / then reopened, / in a quarry — / of chance find” where excavating a whale suddenly speaks to the precedent found to reopen the Loving case. One poem is a 2-page lexicon delineating the 1960s. How does it all work together? One word that comes to mind is an artist’s word: chiaroscuro. Dark and light dance together throughout this compelling collection. On a beach walk, “the sleeve of sunset” leads to these lines, running down the center of the page, like vertebrae:

Then darkness

then darkness

reveals

how seeing

outward

becomes the same

as looking

within

The poems and the stories unfold in layers. Water is another theme running all the way through the book, from the gorgeous cover art and the title of the collection to beaches, rivers, the Chesapeake bay, blood, watercolor paintings. In one poem, “Portrait” — “Backwash, sea rise, tidal range, / groundwater” — the poem overflows with salt water that reshape a continent as human events reshape a country.

And this poem:

Women of the Chesapeake

for Mildred Loving

Each heart
an estuary
aorta and vein
riverine channels
cells and platelets
circulate
as though drum
and stripers
saltwater churns with fresh
in beat with the inlet sea

Now the chambers
of my heart
fill more slowly
rise
with systolic tide
your body
lies low
in the aquifer
memory of you
runs in the watershed

— Kirsten Hampton, The Ocean Cannot Be Blue

If I hadn’t already pushed toward violating copyright laws, I would include “Letter To My Daughters” which makes crystal clear the ways the Loving story and other threads — particularly her artist mother — illuminate the poet’s life.

By the way, you can find five more poems by Kirsten Hampton at Beltway Poetry Quarterly.

I don’t feel I have done the book justice, so I’ll end by saying simply that I wasn’t merely impressed by it, didn’t merely marvel at its amazing composition, I really loved it, and recommend it to you.

photo by B Reid