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Reviewed by Lou Roach

Charles Ries has again put together a collection of poems that reflect his ability to examine his surroundings and himself with a skeptic's eye and a romanticist's ideals. When he combines the two, he offers readers a rich assortment of perspectives of the human condition--both actual and imagined. He has succeeded in doing that in The Last Time, his fourth book of poetry, published recently by The Moon Publishing & Printing of Tucson, Arizona.

With his heart steeped in the beauty, emotionality, and the culture of Mexico, but with his feet planted in Wisconsin, Ries demonstrates his progress as a poet and participant in our current society. He has, in the past, been described as failing "to realize simplicity" as the way to reach the state of happiness. In this newest work, he presents several poems that address his understanding of the need to live simply, yet his words acknowledge how the world gets in his way, as it does for all of us.

"Thin Sip of Water" indicates the changes in his outlook. "And why was I even trying to warm this glacier? / I guess hoping hot lava ran beneath such cold weather veins. / Sweet surrender and Patsy Cline might co-habit this vision in black velvet."

In a brief interview, when asked about his love of all things Hispanic, Ries noted, "It is a wonderful collision of culture, religion, art, and poverty. It has not become bloated with money and stuff as ours has. . .Mexico is magic to me...The people don't need a priest as intermediary (with God.)"

His view of Mexico has become synonymous with dreams as in, "Fly, Fall Dreaming," where he admits, "My dream today is for a lover. / My dream doesn't require her to grow old with me and rub my forehead as I lay dying. / She only needs to fill my dream time. / My moment here and now. // Isn't that why we dream? / To have the impossible for just a moment? / To reach for things beyond our grasp during those times when falling and dreaming live suspended above our kitchen sink, answering machine and dinner table?"

Ries clearly knows that life is never predictable. He also knows enough to recognize meaningful bits of time as they occur. In "Red Head," (about a real mentor/friend/muse), the poet speaks pensively: "When I am with her, being is like brathing and long silences are as productive as two hour conversations. / Love often finds us this way--Right person, wrong place / Wrong time, right person / Right woman, near death." He concludes, "I will be happy to hold her in my heart as a perfect moment when lkove blew through the right window at the wrong time."

The reader understands Ries would prefer to keep these moment close, even when outlines in sadness, rather than not have them at all. With "Anti-Gravity Man," Ries relates to that empty place in all humans, the part of us that sets us on a path marked by introspection, dreams, wishes and an unending search for the person, the work or the passion that we hope may fill that mysteriously barren space. Ries writes, "He tried to fill the hole--find / the center of what fell out of him." / He describes the uncertainty of direction that underlies most lives: "Most days he felt he wasn't even standing on / earth. But he wanted to. // He theorized that a heart must hold the universe and weigh ten thousand pounds. / It is a heart that keeps feet on the floor." A man who has lived much--emotionally, intellectually and spiritually--Ries reveals his comprehension of how connection to others makes us real when he states, "Nothing mattered to this untethered floating pilgrim, but finding a cure / for his gaping hole. A yearning he did not acknowledge until the day / he became firmly rooted in her."

Throughout this book of poetry, Ries examines the joys of being truly alive. He frequently emphasizes just how difficult humans find the reach for perfection, as in, "Perfect Saint," where he appreciates a Latin saint, Maximon, who forgives "any transgression." "He rises with the sun and burns all night long. // How glorious to be naked / beneath a blanket of forgiveness."

"Bad at Buddha" presents Ries's wish to give in to wild emotionality, his desire to spend some time living without detachment and discernment. The reader realizes that beneath his pieceful exterior, odd pieces of anger and indignation roil within his inner self and that even though he had actively sought calm for himself, there are days he would choose to move outside his compassion, like much of the rest of the world. "I'd like a few of my old attachments / back. Wrap a tasty wad of anger / around my fist and pound it home / . . .So come to think of it, I guess I do / have a few nasty attachments dangling / from my purified psyche. . ."

The range of the poems in The Last Time makes known the poet's personal growth since the publication of his first book, Bad Monk: Neither Here nor There. He is less confused about love and more in tune with what love means. He tells richer stories and owns more depth of feeling than in his previous offering. We benefit exponentially from his development as a poet.

One of Ries's poems, "Below the Floor," underscores how distance between self and others causes isolation, and how he has dealt with that distance on one occasion. "I live in the basement / beneath the footstepts / ...My ex-wife lives one floor above, / 10,000 miles away. / My daughters with wings / sail between heaven and earth. / Getting honey from the clouds / and iron from the brown soil. // My possessions are ideas. / My lovers' names all rhyme. / My conquests are fictionalized. // The shadow side of home sweet home, / where a giant prowls naked beneath the floor"

The title poem, "The Last Time," is both sadly reminiscent and celebratory of the paradoxes of love. Ries captures the sensuality, the fragility and the wonder of how love begins and how, unfortunately, it may end. He also reminds us that we treasure the fragments that remain because of the delight, the heightened senses that keep us open to opportunity. Ries asks, "Do you suppose love - true love - parts / the curtain and allows angels and night visitors / to circle this light? A light that smells like cinnamon / and sounds like children's whispers. / We had only to breathe the same air to believe it."

In that poem, as in others in the book, Ries demonstrates his increasing ability to see and describe the unpredictability of relationships, the pursuit of living fully, and the courage to see life changes with "new eyes," as Proust encouraged all of us to do. Ries's attitude shows us how.