Distilled from Water: Speculative Poetry About Water. Herb Kauderer, Written Image, 2024, Wrttnimage@aol.com, 16 pp., $10.00 SBN 978-1-944249-21-2. https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/distilled-from-water?srsltid=AfmBOoql_MGrsIe5VuKB6I07Tt2OcglzQK-CLlxGM97uyVTVByf2Keyo
A Review by Sandra J. Lindow
Herb Kauderer’s Distilled From Water consists of forty speculative poems economically packaged for the North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC) held in Buffalo, New York in July 2024.
Kauderer, whose enviable job is to teach at Hilbert College in Hamburg, New York, has been deeply changed by the competing influences of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. His musings on water’s powerful nature (and the creatures who live in and on and around it) range from the scientific to the mystical with many intersections in between. Ecology and environmentalism unify his work. Many of his poems are short, exemplifying both the power of water and that of few words.
The first poem, “traces of civilization,” needs to be read more than once:
Greenland’s sharks swim slowly
living seven hundred years;
you can find individuals
whose skin is carved with scars
of both battles with Vikings
and nuclear residue
“Civilization” is an evocative word that could be meant ironically as well as sociologically. The title suggests that this could be the view of a future anthropologist, that humans are gone except for traces. “Nuclear residue” could be a clue to the cause.
“Without Substance” draws a connection between clouds in the sky and thoughts stored in internet clouds, suggesting that internet communication can lack substance: “reducing humans / to dancing electrons.” A number of poems deal with the complex nature of memory. In “lost thoughts regained” “ancestral memories float downstream” are “swept away to salt water [tears maybe?] to be reunited with parents,” a unity of science, psychology and mythology. This is also true of “heading” which begins:
every ripple of an ocean
holds the pattern of a tidal wave
and every single cell instructs
how to build man
Thus, Distilled reminds readers that the ocean remains primordial soup, holding a map to all life, including human. It underlines deep interconnectedness, and in “Tidal Pools” new life is birthed by the moon:
Gargoyle moon above hunches,
ready to pull hard with tide pools
and storms dragging any new lifeform
forward in evolution.
But despite on-going evolutionary energy, increasing industrial pollution elicits cautionary tales: “past life memories / molten / plastic ocean /remembers cool / water, sheds polyethylene / teardrops,” a remarkably powerful cinquain where “past life” does not refer to the pop psychology trend of remembering previous lives during hypnotic intervention. It is the Anthropocene age of the earth’s geological history. Kauderer implies that the toxic residue of human influence may take a very long time to heal if healing is possible at all.
Other poems tell of researchers who encounter mystical South American monsters that serve as nature’s protectors: Sachamama, Quetzalcoatl, Yakumama, and Huayramama, deities that together unite earth, fire, water and sky. Meeting these gods can only end in terrifying transcendence.
On the lighter side, Kauderer’s humor is sly but not dry. A “Janitor’s Ghost” protects the drinking fountain at P.S. 33. Fish swimming in a “zero-G aquarium / don’t even know / which side is top.” A “space gigolo” who “works months in water tanks / earning accreditation for low-g sex” hides “his dependence on Dramamine.” Or this one breath: “alternate attire needed / it rains upwards in heaven.”
In conclusion, Kauderer is a master of the short form, each word placed in such a way that it resonates most powerfully. Even his longer poems tell much bigger stories that leave much to his readers’ educated response. Highly recommended.
Sandra Lindow has served as Vice President and Acting President of SFPA. Her poetry has been seen in various markets including Asimov’s, Star*Line, Dreams and Nightmares, Dwarf Stars, and the Rhysling Anthologies. Her spec related editing includes Dwarf Stars, Eye to the Telescope, the second Rhysling winners anthology, Alchemy of Stars II, and most recently the 2025 Valentines Day page. She lives on a hilltop in Menomonie, Wisconsin where she attempts various strategies to keep varmints from eating her vegetables and perennials.
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