Go just three days without water, and your body is in serious trouble. We
need the stuff, and not just for physical sustenance. Fresh water provides us
with 鈥渕etaphor, power and enchantment鈥�, as The River鈥檚 Voice,
a collection of more than 180 poems from both sides of the Atlantic, so
beautifully reminds us.
Chosen by Angela King and Susan Clifford, founder directors of the
arts/environment charity Common Ground, this book makes you wonder anew why we
treat our rivers and streams so abominably. It reminds us that rivers matter,
not least because 鈥渢heir fate is intricately intertwined with
ours鈥攏aturally and culturally鈥�. No-nonsense empiricism is all very well,
but something can be gained, the editors argue, 鈥渂y going the long way
谤辞耻苍诲鈥�.
And there are plenty of wonderful meanders here. Robert Frost, for instance:
鈥淎 brook in the city . . . thrown/Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone/In fetid
darkness still to live and run鈥�/And all for nothing it had ever
done/Except forget to go in fear perhaps.鈥� Too grim? Try Hayden Carruth鈥檚
murmuring brook that sings 鈥渁n uncivilized music. . . Truly the music meant
nothing,/no intimation, which was why/I liked it so much, my brook/murmuring all
night in the darkness/and I meant nothing, and I liked that too.鈥� Then there鈥檚
Helen Dunmore in understandably wary mode: 鈥淗ungry Thames, I walk over the
bridge/ half-scared you鈥檒l whittle me down. . . 鈥� Dive into this stunning
anthology, and water will never again be just something out of a tap. Published
by Green Books, 拢9.95, ISBN 187009882X.
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