Description

If the Water

by Cathy Cain

In If the Water, Cathy Cain steers a flotilla of fantasies and meditations that, with her big heart and playful verbal dexterity, become lifeboats of connection as we navigate the strange, amorphous, and often anxious seas of being. 

Early Praise

Cathy Cain’s new poetry collection If the Water is not just a great delight, it is a book of delights:  a book of play, a book of thought, a book that speaks the truth of love and sadness.  Throughout these vivid poems, Cain is powerfully aware of the many seas of being and welcomes the reader on the journey with a rare and generous hand.

—Annie Lighthart, author of Pax

The poems in Cathy Cain’s If the Water deftly take the reader on a journey with imagery that returns us again and again to water. Whether about a miscarriage, the love of a spouse, or the horror of refugees on a sinking boat, these poems take us back to our common womb—the sea. In a world of watery light, waves and tides, Cain’s beautiful poems reflect back to us our own sorrows and joys, leaving us all with a better understanding that we are all leaf shimmer and silver turning/a wild multitude of small tremblings/a simmering sea.

—Carey Taylor, author of Some Aid to Navigation

If the Water by Cathy Cain is about making one’s way in the world, to borrow Annie Lighthart’s phrase, in the fragile craft of one’s body. These poems flow through the intermingled waters of literature and art, myth and truth, reality and the imagination. Even Peter Pan and his flying ship steer the reader for part of the journey. Metaphors involving water abound in sensational and surprising turns—a library likened to “an aquarium    or a cross section of the open sea.” Cain’s language pulses with musical rhythms, and each poem is deftly accomplished by intuitive forms. After turning the last page of this haunting, sparkling collection, the breadth—childhood, motherhood, love, self-reflection—and most of all the grace of Cain’s poetry abides.

—Lana Hechtman Ayers, author of The Autobiography of Rain

 

About the Author

Cathy Cain is the author of four previous books of poetry: Lamplight, The Weight of Clouds, A Shape of Sky, and Bee Dance (The Poetry Box). She has also published two chapbooks: Love’s Press (The Poetry Box) and Empty Space Places You (Finishing Line Press).

Cain’s honors include the Edwin Markham Prize for Poetry, the Paulann Petersen Award for Poetry from Willamette Writers, a Pushcart Prize nomination, a PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection nomination, and a First Place and other citations from the Oregon Poetry Association. Her poetry has appeared in Reed Magazine, The Poeming Pigeon, Verseweavers, VoiceCatcher, and in /pãn| dé | mïk/ 2020: An Anthology of Pandemic Poems.

A visual artist and the mother of two fine sons, Cathy Cain taught in the public schools for over thirty years. She lives with her husband near Portland, Oregon.