The Cataracts

Ray is a bracingly intelligent writer. These carefully constructed poems (informed by his intelligence, broad reading, and generosity) are precisely the kind of work it is CHP's mission to publish. Ray's poetry is always concerned with the environment and humanity's penchant for destruction, and Cataracts strikes a particularly prescient cord. This collection is more personal than previous ones, and there's been sustained interest (most of the poems have already been placed), making for a wider audience for the book This is experimental work, but always leavened with Ray's insistently humane instincts There are puzzles in the poems, but the object is not to trick the reader, but to excite their appreciation of perspective.