Dancing the Waves and Other Poems By Steven Curry A poet-surfer translates the ocean's embrace in graceful meditative poetry counterpoised with the joyful language of mystic Rumi. Stunning surf and water photographs by Wayne Levin. Perhaps the only poetry book about surfing in print. ISBN 0-9653971-5-7 $10.95

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REVIEW EXCERPT: "Steven Curry is an English professor at the University of Hawaii, a writer, an admirer of the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi, a practitioner of t'ai chi ch'uan and a surfer. All of these pieces of his life form the background "ever-changing and full of movement, like sun-dappled water" of his second collection of poems. The first, "Waxing the Lunar Mountain Apple" (and isn't that an image to conjure by?), was born of his dreams. The second arises from his passion for surfing, which here serves as a metaphor for life. This collection is very approachable, available for understanding at different levels. I am not an insightful reader of poetry but felt myself able to follow Curry in much the same way as I once watched a spear-fisherman free-diving. I floated timidly just under the surface, breathing hard through a snorkel; he was far below, somewhat distorted, doing things I couldn?t always see, but I could follow and share from a distance. Curry"s poems often begin almost journalistically, then take off from the earthly landscape like ehu kai -- delicate sea spray that glimmers and disappears..." Curry marries his work with that of Rumi, quoting couplets and fragments at the opening that mark his starting place. The book is illustrated with the dream-like underwater photos of Big Island art photographer Wayne Levin. The three together are meant to be a kind of "concerto," Curry said, formed of the interplay of Rumi"s thoughts about the inner life, Levin's more-than-they-seem photographs and Curry's poetry. "Na Kupuna O Ke Kai" tells of old-time surfers on their longboards, paddling out despite thickened middles and stiffened muscles. "When the soul first put on the body's shirt / the ocean lifted up all its gifts," Rumi writes. Then Curry evokes a surfer's funeral, ashes and leis scattered in the sea. They surf, he writes "until their bodies and years release them. / Then one morning, the men they've grown old with, their families, and the generations they / have taught will do for them one final time / what they can no longer do for themselves." Much of this work dwells on the body as a temporary house -- "a shirt" -- that will someday no longer hold the spirit. The water is a constant reminder of our origins, and of the lightness -- both in weight and illumination -- of our true beings and even of death. For Curry, "surfing is a sort of going to church, a form of meditation, an activity of the soul, very meditative and spiritual after a long day of work." The "dancing" in the title poem is a reference to the practice of the Suvi dervishes dancing to more closely connect with the inner life. Even as his board dances on the waves, his mind dances with words that lead him inward and then to the page..." -- Wanda Adams, Honolulu Advertiser, 4/28/98

REVIEW EXCERPT: "'When the soul first put on the body's shirt,' writes the mystical poet Rumi, 'the ocean lifted up all its gifts.' Those gifts include not only the ocean's steadfast embrace of the earth, but also the way the sea bears its white neck to us to be kissed and its blue shoulders to be ridden. Poets, mystics, and surfers understand more than most the language of these gifts, and occasionally we discover someone, like Steve Curry, who is all three and can translate them back to us. In 'Dancing the Waves and Other Poems,' Curry presents his best poetry yet, counterpoised with the joyful language of Rumi and the stunning water photographs of Wayne Levin. This is graceful, meditative poetry to be read again and again..." -- Frank Stewart, Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Literature

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