Sea Trails: Poems and 1977 Passage Notes [Paperback]

Pris Campbell (Author), Chris Yeseta (Designer)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 2009

We never see things in themselves, only things as they appear to our own particular sensibilities, moods, and associations. Nowhere is that clearer than in poetry, and nowhere in poetry is that clearer than in Pris Campbell's new book, Sea Trails. Part travelogue and part poetic narrative, the book brilliantly counter-poses poetic revelations of the speaker as she moves from "in love" to "out of love" and prose descriptions of a journey down the American Intracoastal Waterway, including details of the physical workings of the journey and of the landscapes which sustain her. An emotional, sensual, and visceral joy to read. Scott Owens

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

The poetry of Pris Campbell has appeared in such journals as Chiron Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, OCHO, and Wild Goose Review. She was featured poet in 2008/2009 in Empowerment4Women, In the Fray, and From East to West. In 2008, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her most recent chapbook, Hesitant Commitments, was published by Lummox Press (www.lummoxpress.com) and is part of the Little Red Book series. Before she was sidelined by CFIDS in 1990, Pris was a Clinical Psychologist, working in St Louis, Honolulu, Providence, and Boston, ending up in the greater West Palm Beach, FL, where she currently lives with her husband, a sea loving dog and a cat who sleeps on her poetry drafts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 100 pages
• Publisher: Lummox Press (September 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1929878028
• ISBN-13: 978-1929878024
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,259,026 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars On Course/Adrift: Passages, August 10, 2011

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sea Trails: Poems and 1977 Passage Notes (Paperback)

Pris Campbell dares to go where others fear to tread, and it is that mindset of honesty that drives her journal about a boat journey along the Atlantic Coast from Massachusetts to Florida, July to November, 1977 into a very special poetic work. The book is written on several levels: first, this is a mariner's log, a personal journal, an examination of the motivations for a prolonged voyage in the midst of a relationship that is rocky, a book of maps and sea jargon, and second it is a collection of poems written as the heart's response to the voyage nautical and emotional. It works splendidly well.

The mariner log of the book is fine reading for those with adventurous hearts such as Campbell who, like Melville and Conrad before her, are passionate about the great waters of the sea. And just as in the writings of those men, the expanse of salt air wafting through the crevices of the body somehow frees the spirit to mourn, to long for, to breathe romance. Campbell has the gift for relating the needs for sensual pleasures along side the quiet hurt when those pleasures are incomplete. The man with whom Campbell travels is the echo of a relationship soured and in ways the author hopes that the time alone, the element of being out on the sea without the distractions of living ashore, may possible heal the rifts. But her poetry tells us otherwise. An excerpt from 'Streaking': 'I want him inside me before weighing anchor,/ certain Neptune will rise, enraged and hungry,/ out of those black jersey seas/to swallow us whole on this long night run/ from Manisquan to Atlantic City./ I pull him into me hard --wild animals rutting/in this coffin-like cabin, feet kick yes/ to seawater slosh outside./ We stopped making love months ago./ Now we just use each other's bodies/ to unleash out fears and occasionally/ discover buried treasure.'...etc

She can wax eloquent about sights along the way of the passage, time ashore for supplies, etc, and in these poems she is both a painter of atmosphere and a vessel of vulnerability:

Charleston

Shore houses are fitted with Widows walks,
railed rooftop platforms where women once
watched the heaving horizon for their men to return.
Listen closely and you can hear a skirt rustle,
the occasional tread of women's feet.

The city is a Monet painting.
Flowers are sold on street corners by black women,
hair bound in scarves the color of butterflies.
The old South still folds into itself and endures.

We wander into what we think is a public garden,
sit breathing pink blossoms, legs sprawled.
An elderly man in a blue blazer, dollar bills hovering
in speech bubbles over his head, asks us to leave.
We trudge back onto pastel street in faded jeans,
sailing hats encrusted with sea salt.

Bt mid-afternoon, we hold hands.
Some days forgiveness comes easier than others.
It drifts in on white magnolia blossoms.

To share more of Pris Campbell's SEA TRAILS would be akin to walking into a darkened movie house in the middle of a drama. This book is satisfying on all levels and easily convinces us of the mind and talent of a very gifted lady. Spend time on this voyage of body and spirit and discover the universals that fill every page. Grady Harp, August 11

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sea Trails, March 12, 2010

By 

Scott Owens "Scott Owens" (Hickory, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sea Trails: Poems and 1977 Passage Notes (Paperback)

If you like poetry, you'll love Pris Campbell's new book Sea Trails (Lummox, 2009). If you don't like poetry, even if you don't understand poetry, even if you resent poetry and poets, you'll love this book. If you like a story, if you like the sea, if you like memoirs, confessions, and reality shows, you'll love this book.
It's easy to be impressed with the creativity on display in Pris Campbell's decision to juxtapose log notes from a sailing journey down the East Coast with highly personal and evocative poetry written about that journey. The complementation of prose and poetry, art and memoir creates a unique example of mimesis in action, a wonderful opportunity to speculate on the relationship between art and life, and the most enjoyable means of facilitating the comprehension of a poem that I've ever encountered. All that's missing is the movie.
What might be overlooked in all of this is that even were there no log notes, no interesting details about sailing, no overarching narrative, and no innovative design, these would still be fantastic poems, and as much as I enjoy all the things that make this book unique and that make it more readable to a wider audience than every other collection of poetry from the past 10 years, it is still the poetry that makes it a great book. Campbell speaks in these poems with a clarity and vibrancy that create an unmistakably familiar emotional impact on the reader. Each poem contains its own catharsis as they build towards the summative climax of the narrative. "Why I Call Him My Lover," for example, establishes the central conflict of the book while manifesting the oxymoronic desperate resignation of a lover falling out of love.

He's not my mate.
Not my husband, either.
I don't think of him
as my partner.
He's not sweetie, hon,
darlin', or luv.
I no longer use his given
name except when calling him.
We create what seems like love
in the V-berth each evening
and, sometimes, for a sail
flutter, it is again.
That and the boat
are our only tether.

Similarly, these lines from "Reversals" embody that same speaker's stubborn hope that something worthwhile can yet be crafted from what has gone stale: "Unknown harbors wait to embrace us, / to cast roses upon hope that what / has been lost can still find fresh breath." And, one of my favorite poems in the collection, "Original Sin," re-envisions the myth of Adam and Eve to carry the conflict forward while beautifully expressing the inevitable disappointment one feels in loss:

When Adam bedded Eve in these dark pines
I wonder if they laughed in their nakedness,
threw kisses at lopsided stars.
I doubt Adam searched for other Eves to ogle,
found fault or ignored her. . . .
Our boat swings with the tide, waking us.
He slides inside. My very own Adam,
already tainted by original sin.

The flow of emotions engulfing this waning relationship is not, however, the only current that runs through these poems. There is also a movement towards independence, self-actualization, and, as first made clear in "Rebirth," a joie de vivre expressed in the thrill of sailing:

I've birthed her hundreds of times
just as she's birthed me,
but each time is a new time.
Umbilical cut, we move towards the open sea.

Even as the relationship between the speaker and her lover fester, this growth towards self-discovery and happiness continues in poems like "Newport Mayhem," which concludes

I'm glad to sit on Little Adventure
under the darkening plum colored sky, feeling
every fresh second merge with my heartbeat
until my chest splits wide open to the glory of now.

Eventually the contrary currents of waxing self-discovery and waning co-dependence diverge as the speaker achieves her epiphany in "Daytona Redux:"

Suddenly I know I have what I need without him.
My little boat.
Good friends.
Sea air caressing my face.
This day, so beautiful it could break your heart.

The bottom line is that this is a brilliantly satisfying work of art. From the innovative combination of log notes, maps, charts, photographs, and of course, poetry, to the beautiful cover, the enticing narrative, and the sharp, clear, and engaging poetry, it is one of the best works I've read in several years.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Striking travelogue and poetry, but the touch is light and honest, October 9, 2009

By 

J. KNOWLES (Wimington, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sea Trails: Poems and 1977 Passage Notes (Paperback)

This is a trip log, some sea lore, a story of something slipping away, and poetry with a wider view. The central theme I fixed on was the falling away of an intimacy, and the reaction, a wave of intimacy with the world and nature given into. The prose is lush, but with a crispness and accurate visual touch that remind me of the days when cinematographers fawned over the world with their optics. You can lose yourself in the flow of this trip, the epiphanies, and the swooning moments. Not many can have their finest moments in the middle of a loss, and fewer still can catch it all with that uncanny combination of clarity and wistful displaced affection. The poems we usually see published are a bit riper in color, like a Kodak shot. They have to be, really. This is a more relaxed, open, true-colored piece, a Nikon kind of prose, and it puts you right in the cockpit with Pris. It's a place to go, and things to learn, poetically, psychologically, philosophically. So, um....I like it a lot. Can you tell?