By Carolyn Martin
Joanne Durham’s entertaining and inspiring chapbook, On Shifting Shoals, epitomizes
Wallace Stevens’ famous quotation regarding the creation and love of poetry: “In poetry you must love the words, the ideas, and the images and rhythms with your capacity to love anything at all.”
Durham’s collection, named for shifting shoals of the Atlantic Ocean off the North Carolina coast, contains twenty-four poems that reveal her love of the natural world where, “the clean sweep of tide” can wash away sand-sculpted dreams (Sand Dreams) as well as serve up “a shark tooth, coveted treasure” (The Hunt).
In The Mayor Supports Oil Drilling off Our Coast, Durham describes graphically the destruction that oil drilling inevitably brings to beaches and wildlife. She illuminates the need for concern not only for tar balls and birds “draped/in toxic slush,” but the harsh reality of “...what can’t/be seen: secret folds of coral/drenched beyond survival...” The poem leaves the reader straddling between the joy of defeating the Mayor (and the oil drilling) and the foreboding future as “the threat continues.”
Durham continues the balancing act between a temporal elation and ominous potential futures by placing her readers in a world where condos are displacing carnivals and hurricanes are expected liabilities. Yet, in Equanimity she recognizes the ocean’s and nature’s resilience.
It urges me to listen
between road and purr, abandon
my frantic grip trying to steer the tide.
I scroll my fingers over the smooth shell
that rests in my pocket, savor
the slippery sea inside my palm.
In addition to the balance between the present and the future, Durham pays equal attention to the human world as she shifts gracefully from the beach to encounters with disagreeable neighbors, contemplations with her husband on where to be buried, the horror of a neighbor’s house fire, and a contentious encounter with a Boy Scout.
In this collection, Durham challenges her readers to “learn to salvage/the bounty that belongs/to all of us” (Garbage). Who can resist responding affirmatively? On Shifting Shoals offers an exquisite bounty of poetry that must not merely be salvaged but relished and applauded.
From associate professor of English to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin, Ph.D., has journeyed from New Jersey to Oregon to discover Douglas firs, months of rain, and dry summers. Her poems have appeared in more than 200 publications throughout North America, Australia, and the UK. Her sixth full-length collection, Splitting Open the World, will be released in 2025 by The Poetry Box. For more: www.carolynmartinpoet.com.
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