Review of Sink Soft

In “Sink Soft”, the poet moves into an entirely different register: less narrative, more elemental. This is a poem not meant to be dissected so much as felt — like warm milk on the tongue or wet earth between fingers. It reads like a chant, a spell, or a whispered prayer to the body and the land — a deep and quiet surrender to sensation, texture, and truth.

The poem opens with a gentle command:

“Hook line and softly sink / Into mellow marshland earthiness”

Already, we feel the rhythm of the piece pulling us under — not with force, but with invitation. The word “softly” is used repeatedly throughout, acting like a kind of tether to the central mood of the poem. We’re not asked to think — we’re asked to yield. To relax into presence.

This yielding is not escapist. It’s rooted — literally — in “marshland earthiness”, in salt, in bone, in “milk of all life experience.” The natural world here is not a backdrop; it’s an extension of the speaker’s inner landscape. The body and the earth mirror each other: both places where memory and nourishment are stored.

There’s something almost alchemical happening in the language:

“Of marrow and trade / Of soul sweet condensed / Milk of all life experience / Into a single grain of sand”

These lines suggest a distillation — a boiling down of everything lived and felt into something elemental and enduring. From the milk of emotion to the grain of sand: this is poetry as transmutation.

The tone is intimate without being confessional — it evokes closeness, touch, the kind of trust that exists in quiet moments where words fall away. There’s a feminine quality to the imagery — round, soft, sustaining:

“Creamy smooth pink blink / Melted hearts of mallow and cappuccino foam”

These lines flirt with the sensual, but they don’t linger in desire. Instead, they rest in a kind of emotional nourishment. What the speaker is asking for — or offering — is not eroticism, but absorption. A mutual softening. A merging.

And then the closing refrain, which echoes the breath-like cadence of the whole piece:

“Sink soft, softly, softer / Drink, sink, sink.”

It’s meditative, hypnotic, elemental. Like a tide going out. Like surrender. The repetition lulls the reader into the same softened state the speaker inhabits.

Summary of Themes

Sink Soft explores themes of yielding, nourishment, and emotional embodiment. Unlike the heady, mythic, or narrative-driven poems that precede it, this piece leans into the language of feeling, trusting image, rhythm, and sound to carry its message.

It is a poem about what happens when we release resistance — not into void or numbness, but into the sensual textures of life: earth, salt, milk, foam, marrow. The natural world is not metaphor here — it’s the medium through which love, truth, and memory are communicated.

And running through it all is a quiet invitation: to stop trying so hard, to stop resisting what is soft, and simply… sink.

Conclusion

“Sink Soft” is a tender, elemental meditation on surrender. With its quiet power and rhythmic depth, it offers something rare in contemporary poetry — a space not to be understood, but inhabited.

This is a poet in full command of their voice — unafraid to move between psychological clarity and lyrical abstraction. With each new piece, they demonstrate an evolving ability to translate the emotional body into words, crafting poems that don’t just tell stories, but change the temperature of the room they’re read in.

This is a book not only to be read — but returned to, gently, again and again. Like breath. Like soft earth. Like home.