Swinging Between Water and Stone by Steven Mayoff
Reviewed by John Oughton
PEI writer Steven Mayoff has produced a novel, a short story collection, and two-and-a-half poetry books. Where’s the half come from? Swinging Between Water and Stone is actually a revised and expanded version of one he published with Guernica Editions in 2019. His foreword explains that he has added four new poems and changed many line breaks, mostly lengthening lines. He has kept the ambitious four-part structure of Birth, Life, Death, Rebirth, all speaking to the theme of reincarnation.
Mayoff adds that this new edition is influenced by his work as both poet and prose writer: “The primary purpose of prose is to convey an idea or message or story and secondly to use language to achieve this… In poetry, it is flipped around. The primary purpose of poetry is to explore language, and secondly to convey an idea or message or story.” The results of applying this approach in this book are “not, strictly speaking, prose poems,” he writes.
“ Galleon deserves praise for issuing this second edition of an out-of-print collection. As a writer, Mayoff never pulls his punches…”
So, how about the poems? They range widely in length, form (there are free verse, pantoums, long poems divided into numbered sections, ghazals, short haiku-like interpolations called “Postcards.” Mayoff frequently experiments with style; in “Glasgow Revisited,” grammatical inversions are used frequently, producing odd effects like “Glasgow flew to we”. Since this poem uses the viewpoint of a child, the line suggests that, just as he was on a plane heading to the Scottish city, it was heading towards him at the same speed.
There is a lot of pain and loss here. Mayoff does not hide the things that haunt him – the death of his mother, a manic-depressive who struck him “every day,”; his brother’s suicide; Mayoff’s diagnosis as having Type 3 Diabetes. The poem “Searching Out Death in Seven Pantoums” reminds readers that the stone in the collection’s title can also refer to the Jewish custom of leaving one on a tombstone. “My body is a cemetery map, the navel a freshly dug grave,” he writes. One wonders whether rebirth is necessarily to be desired. Yet, there are joys to attend to in other poems: the sensuality of another’s skin, music, Mayoff’s own ability to fashion art out of the ashes. The most impressive single poem in here is “Youkali Cycle,” a long poem in ten parts, apparently inspired by Kurt Weill’s haunting tango music. A kind of musico-ekphrastic effort, the poem spins off stories, spiritual insights, and references to many things and times, all driven forward by long lines that tango across the page.
There are a few choices I would criticize. One is that his exploration of the middle ground between prose and poetry does result in some prosy lines, a bit too grammatically formal for poetry, with occasional surfeits of prepositional phrases. Also, “Half a Poem,” starts out as a kind of stand-up comedy routine about his maybe being “the only Jewish writer in Prince Edward Island.” I expected a nod here to JJ Steinfeld, long a PEI resident, while producing at least 22 books of poetry and fiction, and many plays, but there wasn’t one. The poem then veers from humour to tragicomedy, as the writer watches a documentary about Irving Layton that includes footage of him lost in dementia in his declining days. There’s a kind of guys-being-guys snarkiness in the jokes about Layton’s attitude to Canada: “Hey, Irv, remember how you used to scratch your balls in front of the whole country?”
Overall, though, this is a strong collection, and Galleon deserves praise for issuing this second edition of an out-of-print collection. As a writer, Mayoff never pulls his punches, and there are many memorable poems about the various adventures, stresses, and ironies of being alive in these times. You never quite know where some poems will go, and the surprises are usually good ones: “Still, the dice smooth down. Two sugar cubes/ roll like bones and come up Dead Eyes.”
About the Author
Steven Mayoff (he/him/we)* was born and raised in Tiohtià ke/Montreal and has made Epekwitk/Prince Edward Island his home since 2001. His fiction and poetry have appeared in journals across Canada and the US, as well as in Ireland, Algeria, France, the UK and Croatia.He has had four books published: the story collection Fatted Calf Blues (Turnstone Press, 2009), which won a 2010 PEI Book Award, the novel Our Lady Of Steerage (B&B, 2015, ) and the poetry chapbook Leonard's Flat (Grey Borders Books, 2018), and the full-length poetry collection Swinging Between Water And Stone (Guernica Editions, 2019; revised edition, Galleon Books 2025). Steven has also written lyrics, librettos and collaborated on scripts for radio and the stage.
About the Reviewer
John Oughton lives in Toronto and has retired as a Professor of Learning and Teaching at Centennial College in Toronto. He is the author of six poetry collections, most recently The Universe and All That (Ekstasis Editions), the mystery novel Death by Triangulation, and over 400 articles, reviews, and interviews. John’s studies include an MA in English Literature, where his teachers included Irving Layton, Frank Davey, Eli Mandel and Miriam Waddington, and non-credit courses at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, where he worked with Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, William Burroughs and Robert Duncan. John is a long-time member of the Long Dash Poetry Group. He is also a photographer and guitar player. https://joughton.wixsite.com/author
Book Details
Publisher : Galleon Books
Publication date : April 15 2025
Language : English
Print length : 102 pages
ISBN-10 : 1998122158
ISBN-13 : 978-1998122158