Book Review: The Crossing Over

Tonmoy Iftekhar

The Crossing Over by Jen Karetnick, Split Rock Review, 2019, $10 paperback

Reviewed by Sury Ghosh Jha

Jen Karetnick, in her chapbook of poems The Crossing Over, writes about what is arguably one of the most heart-wrenching events of present times, the migrant exodus across the Mediterranean Sea. Karetnick gives a boat a voice, and all of the poems are written as an experience that the boat has or has not.

The poems draw a sequence that starts with the birth of the vessel, and then carry on describing the responsibility it bears, the tribulations it faces, and the tragedy it experiences in the process. Karetnick weaves a poignant journal of the boat and to some, the life it restores.

Despair — “But even my dreams of a dock are mere delusions of grandeur” — unpredictability — “if my pilot calls a halt for days, then rushes to fill me like a crossword puzzle, answers jotted in pen” — and loss — “I am a brief dream the ocean once had” — all co-exist in the spirit of the vessel, almost identical to the emotions in the human souls that it carries.

So exist diligence — “To give up is hardly an option” — regret — “Every child that slips out stays as a ghost in my womb, a scar of saline, the trail of a barefoot you’d have to cut into me to see” — and anger — “I am invaded daily, too, rubbed all the wrong ways.”

The poetry resonates and stays with us because it brings forth the palpable relevance of the subject, the imbalance of loss and gain, and above all, the expanse of human spirit needed to survive against all odds.

Karetnick’s use of metaphors and hard-hitting realism, almost as warp and weft in these verses, masterfully directs our consciousness to this political and moral journey that we must undertake.