The Water Bulls: Poems and ArtBy Ray DiZazzo
Cameron Conaway
National Poetry Examiner
The Water Bulls: Poems and Art
By Ray DiZazzo
Cameron Conaway
National Poetry Examiner
Book Review
The Water Bulls is as seasoned as a book of poetry can be. Restaurant menus would call it blackened, and like blackened pieces of meat these poems have been grilled and their fat has dripped off. What’s left is a lean, muscular poetry collection full of the healthy flavor of spices.
Ray DiZazzo has worked in the corporate media world and is perhaps best known there, but for the past 45 years he has been plugging away writing poetry and literary criticism – garnering a few awards, appearing in many small press and commercial magazines. At 65 and having been a long-time reader and writer of poetry, Ray’s work has the secret ingredients that graduate writing programs simply cannot teach – the glaze after a polish, a sprinkle of time. Let’s get to the verse.
With quick turns of the page the reader will see that DiZazzo is not tied to form. His poetry does not stay left-aligned – the form often grows organically from the content. His use of white space and movement on the page is purposeful and his content often proves true his own assessment of his creativity: “...shadows have more potential to grasp the soul and spark the imagination than light.” Shadows here can mean dark, of course, but I also see it meaning that thing around us that’s always there but rarely noticed. Take, for instance, the first half of the title poem “The Water Bulls”:
The water bulls are wrong.
As round with love
as they may be
as bloated tight
with the tenderness
of weight and dreams
their sun has set for good.
Who has seen love in the rounded shape of a water bull? Who tenderness in their bloated tightness? The final line here can be (and should be) read with a sort of beautiful ambiguity. The stubbornness of the bull and the ecological trauma they’ve endured over the years. But let’s not forget this is an image rooted in reality – the sun beating into their dark skin has set, for good. The water bulls are the sun and the sun is the water bull. They do not exist without each other. Notice the cadence to “As round with love / as they may be.” Notice the subtle and spaced rhyme of “be” and “dreams.” Notice letter T’s sound dance with “bloated tight / with the tenderness.” See how my unraveling of these lines is far longer than the lines themselves? It’s this type of concise poetics that define the genre and kept me turning pages. The second half of the poem is equally subtle and equally complex. Well worth the $9.95 to purchase the book on Amazon.
In all honesty, I could enthusiastically write and review each poem in this piece. I can’t say the same for the few books of poetry (and poets) winning most of the major awards out there.
In “Assume,” DiZazzo flips our idea of seeing:
Assume
that being human
we are much too fast
for the sight of plants
that flowers see
at the speed of blooming
“That flowers see / at the speed of blooming.” Only the mind of a poet thinks of this concept and only the skill of a poet can write it as it is here. Notice how DiZazzo does not break the line with “at the.” He breaks it at “see” which allows you to sit on that verse for a powerful millisecond. Flowers see. Digest that one. Now watch how he uses enjambment to continue the image. On top of it all, he’s not telling you this is how flowers see, he’s asking you to assume. With him. He’s asking you to make the reading process a truly transactional one where both writer and reader give and take. To do so much with so little is mastery, and morsels of mastery are what fill each poem in this collection.
The 18-or-so pieces of artwork contained with The Water Bulls do not add or subtract from the collection. While some of the pieces look astonishing, I think they’d be better viewed in person. Call me a purist, but many of the poems on these pages are so bright and so artistic and so well-crafted that the book stands as art and image through the sheer force of the text itself.
Here is the book’s final poem:
FINAL POEM FOR PATTI
SUNDAY AND SEAN
The words are born
in the womb of the mind.
Growing through the
tongue and mouth
their lives are spoken out.
The words are alive
and dead at once.
We keep their spirits.
I am with you.
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