Book Review: Thank the Sweet Waters

Reviewed by Amy Brozio-Andrews

A rich and multilayered examination of love’s blossoming, revealed through insightful poetry

Thank the Sweet Waters by Lucille May offers a tender look at love from first blush to the rhythm of daily living with a partner, a rhythm always rooted in the beauty and movement of the natural world.

Organized into three distinct sections, “Falling in Love Together,” “Love in Practice,” and “What Matters,” the book delves deeply into love as emotion and action. Big sweeping declarations juxtapose tiny everyday moments, and May carefully gathers them like a bouquet.

Many of the poems offer a glimpse into small details of life, such as “Morgan’s First Hat” and “Early Talks with Our Sperm Donor,” and just as many provide an untethered snapshot of life and love that feels universal, like these lines from “I Heard You Got Married:”

“The great promise of marriage is this:
I will spend my time with you.
I give you my time.
It’s all we have to give, really.”

Gilding May’s lyrical writing is the ebb and flow of life. Rising suns, seasonal rains, birdsongs, trees with ripening fruit, fireflies, and soil paint time and relationships with an evergreen feeling. She doesn’t shy away from the challenges of love, like conflict, forgiveness, and change, nor the joys, like desire, peace, and fulfillment. May’s astute observations, like the touch of hand, lingering mealtimes, and the empty side of the bed, offer details that ground her work while also showing a universal accessibility, whether this is the first or fiftieth poetry collection you’ve ever read.

Thank the Sweet Waters is a neatly balanced and well-rounded collection of poetry that walks the reader through love in all its growing and sustaining phases, pulsing with a natural sway between short pieces and longer ones. And the final entry, “Remember This” brings the title and the overall collection full circle in a meaningful and memorable way.

A debut collection that reads like that of a lifelong practitioner of the art, this book is stitched together with care and attentiveness to every word, especially those in the briefest poems, and their arrangement cultivates not just feelings but authentic connection. I’m enthralled by nearly everything May’s been able to do here.

It’s difficult to find a collection where every poem lands; however, in Thank the Sweet Waters, so many of them genuinely reflect the core of love’s past, present, and hopeful future. A thoughtful gift or worthwhile addition to your own bookshelf, Thank the Sweet Waters highlights all that’s possible when we surrender to perfectly imperfect love.

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