Sugar House Review(s)

 

Rough Sea

by J.P. White

(Grayson Books, 2025) 

Reviewed by Erica Gross

J.P. White’s latest collection, Rough Sea, takes us on a cruise with a wise and erudite guide, one who transforms observations of sights along the way, whether otters cavorting on a log, a riverside homeless encampment, or the antics of ravens beside a “growling sea” into a series of vivid and deeply personal poems. White illuminates the world around us, focusing on humans’ impact on the environment, the joys of a love found later in life, and how the intelligence of Nature rivals that of our own. 

Rough Sea resounds with precision, as in “Canoe,” the collection’s opening poem:

I get one more day in September on the fringe

of change and there near the bank, four otters

recline on a log to crack a stash of mussels.

I settle into their savoring without thinking

I should be elsewhere.

The serenity of this moment includes a hard-won, bittersweet insight: “This river light, where otters chirp and bob / and share the feast, must go on without us.” 

White’s awareness of how quickly time passes underscores many of these poems. “Greed” juxtaposes his perception of diminishing expectations with the wonder of a new love. Myriad, unaccountable steps were needed until the connection between the two lovers finally occurred: “I must not have been ready to meet you until I did.” The poem describes their parallel paths: "Then again, how close we were, always, / just missing each other in the same towns, / once living on the same street within a shout."

Eventually, in that mysterious way we can’t quite comprehend, those paths overlap. “If God had told me I had to go back to find you / in some early assignation, I wouldn’t object to the slowness / of looking more keenly at every passing face.” The less time they have together, the more precious it is: "because you are the one I had always imagined / would bring out my greed for more waking hours."

“Regarding Those Lovers Who Meet Late in Life” depicts a less romantic view, to say the least, of such a relationship. “Let us call them two lions circling a kill,” the poem begins, “What lies dead between them is everything.” The partners consider each other’s emotional baggage, as onlookers “watch with wonder and horror.” After enough time, however, their defenses erode: “happily and slowly, they will drink of this.” The poem ends on a hopeful note: "Imagine, from such an encounter, / order will return to the entire kingdom."

White’s poems focus on animals, who appear in alternately wise and hilarious guises. “The Ravens of Mendocino” are “steadier than onions in the ground,” “smart, fearless, faithful to a fault.” In other words, these birds are endowed with qualities we humans value but too often fail to achieve. In “Another Moment,” a small, wild creature inhabits “that corduroy road,” “unsheltered and / ungathered,” living her life on her own terms. And in “Heaven is a Pig at the Fence,” the speaker extolls the virtues of having a pig as a companion: "The world is evermore a sullen face and as you get older / it will see you less, but the pig will always take a gander / and talk freely about this and that."

Immune to the judgements of people, the speaker reminds us, the fact that an animal tolerates our presence is its own reward: “this one piebald pig / with no quit in her for who I am, how I got here, my new limp.” 

Place is key to Rough Sea, and White finds inspiration in unlikely spots. “In a Sea of Trucks” describes a liminal, unnerving location—the vast highway system of America. The countryside, paved and subdued, is forced to accommodate this conduit for consumer spending, the engine that runs our economy: "It doesn’t much matter where you are in Nebraska, Indiana, / North Carolina, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, West Virginia, / once you enter the shipping lane of the American interstate."

Those trucks carry a mind-boggling array of goods: “petroleum and pigs, Fed-X and concrete mixers, / milk and cheese, toiletries, tropical fish, bass boats, / fresh cut flowers, a tank of egg yolks and Red Bull concentrate.” What does this motley collection of merchandise reveal about the desires and dreams of the people who will, at some point, make use of it? Are these items, delivered across thousands of miles, really necessary? The poem asks us to contemplate what would happen if the trucks simply stopped running.

In addition to delivering physical items, these trucks create an uncomfortable, often dangerous environment. White aptly expresses the disorienting experience of driving those slick roads, sandwiched between “semis, one behind the other, / an armada balling hard behind tinted glass [...] / I don’t want to buy another thing / that’s been diesel-tracked across the country.”  

Two poems, “White Nights” and “Long Ago at Lenin’s Tomb,” connect a very different place—Russia—with White’s daughter, whom he adopted from that country. “White Nights” depicts a visit to Russia with his daughter, presumably to show her where she was born and foster a connection with her native culture. The daughter, however, fails to find an affinity for this land she can’t remember: “You see we were there with our adopted daughter / on an in-country tour she never warmed to [...] / She thought her birth country a mistake [...] / Everything confused her.” What she sees exposes a place that seems baffling and threatening: “The night that is the never-ending day,” “How in every village, chickens and goats in a brawl,” “bread lines held by the old ones who never smile.”

“Long Ago at Lenin’s Tomb” opens with another memory of lines:

    The potato and mushroom and garlic line.

    The bread and vodka line.

    The line to stand in to get papers stamped

    to bring home a daughter from an orphanage.

This visit to Russia recalls a time that seems, on reflection, more innocent than the version we see in “White Nights:” “Russia had not yet invaded Afghanistan. / It seemed as if this was a time when war was not / the only ragged coat that could be worn.” The poem ends with a scene of two girls playing with a hula hoop, a foreshadowing of the child he came here to claim.

Athletic and direct, the poems of Rough Sea make the most of diminishing resources. J.P. White reminds us to slow down and appreciate the many moments that make up a life. As he writes in “Morning Miracle,” one of the book’s last poems, “that ending / could be the last beautiful surprise.”

Erica Goss is the author of Landscape with Womb and Paradox, forthcoming from Broadstone Books in 2025, and Night Court, winner of the 2017 Lyrebird Award from Glass Lyre Press. She has received numerous Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, as well as a 2023 Best American Essay Notable. Recent and upcoming publications include The Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, The Indianapolis Review, Oregon Humanities, Creative Nonfiction, North Dakota Quarterly, Gargoyle, Spillway, West Trestle, A-Minor, Redactions, Consequence, The Sunlight Press, The Pedestal, San Pedro River Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal. Erica served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California, from 2013–2016. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, where she teaches, writes, and edits the newsletter Sticks & Stones.