Swimmer Climbing onto Shore

The world is always sensuously and immediately present in Swimmer Climbing onto Shore, Gerald Fleming’s first collection of poetry. While these poems question the capacity of language to render the heart of human existence, the poet’s words never fail to praise the transformative power of art in making sense of that existence. Fleming’s long, rhapsodic sequence of poems, “Ars Poetica,” is a brilliant and lively song in the museum of words. Its inventive dialogue brings to life a creation story in which writer and reader join in the making of worlds neither has seen, but both experience fully.