Many characters people his poetry, some of whom he encounters on his meanderings in Milwaukee and Mexico and parts in between, others only he sees, projected “against the movie screen / God attached to the backside of my eyeballs.” In the single poem with uncharacteristically short lines, Ries cautions us on the need for patience, so that “even a leaf / descending / downward / will shout / words of/ wisdom.” In spite of this advice, he seems more at home in an urban setting, and writes with an unjaundiced yet not unkind eye about the misfits and human oddities who populate his home territory of Milwaukee. In ‘Watching A River Flow’ he shows us a bag lady with neither contempt nor pity, but rather a willingness not merely to look, but to see and to make us see what we might otherwise miss. “Bag lady dances near the dumpster looking like / a helium balloon. She’s the gravitational center / of a plastic bag she wears for warmth. A planet / stuffed full of bathroom tissue and old newspapers. She’s humming…something too. / In her mind she hears a hit parade.”

As a Wisconsin poet, Ries cannot avoid the topics of snow and cold and the craving for spring. But even these subjects are seen freshly through his eyes. ‘The Moon Was January In Wisconsin,’ turns into a sweetly nostalgic romp in the backyard when children were still sent outside to play in any weather, by beleaguered mothers who needed time undisturbed to prepare dinner. Winter appears in a love poem, where warmth is sacrificed upon the altar of fashion. “I love your mantric complaint about how hard it is / to dress well at 20 below zero in the midst of / a blizzard. Yet refusing to compromise for the sake of warmth instead sludging, steadfast ,/ like an Armani foot soldier through road salt, / snow drifts and sleet. Saying, ‘some things / will not be compromised.’” And in ‘60 Degrees of Separation,’ spring, portrayed as the reawakening of passion after a long winter’s sleep, has the gift of a typical surprising Ries ending, in which “snow is sent running under / ground, and we are liberated from our / long pants.”

His work is imbued with the Catholicism of his childhood and the dabblings into Buddhism of someone who came of age in the 1970’s. Into this historic perspective, one reads of his youth on a mink farm. He tells of killing minks, and extends that to war, as he confronts a draft board which questions his request for status as a conscientious objector. “Killing is killing, ain’t it son?” “If I could kill mink, why not men?”

Most lyrical when the source of his inspiration is Mexico, his Latino identity is Carlos. Reading Octavio Paz leads to stanzas like this: “Carlos blows into Olivia’s ear a love whisper / sending a waterfall of kisses cascading out her / mouth onto brown soil where white flowers erupt.”

Ries writes with bewilderment and wonder of the odd predicaments he finds himself in. Perhaps in none of his poems is he more baffled than in his love poems. He is a man who searches for love without having a clue what it is. ‘Valentine’ as so many of his poems, explores the vagaries of love, acknowledging what a mystery it is, this desire of heart, loin, and common paths walked. In the end he concludes, “It has been better to love.” Yet in ‘Schnook,’ he confesses to being a lazy lover, too lazy to commit, too lazy to break it off. ‘Points of View,’ begins with a troubled love relationship and ends questioning the nature of truth. “Truth is a murky pond / A beacon for the mystic / And bacon for the liar.”

He finds his inspiration from many sources: a man seated Buddha-like in a public toilet, the “erotic geography” of Mexico, even the bar stool, which he calls “the poet’s throne.” He writes of waiting for inspiration, “like a frog on a lily pad / scanning the sky for a fly to eat.” “I like to disappear into my head where it / doesn’t cost much to be alone.” And we’re grateful to Charles Ries for opening the window for us to share a glimpse into the world between his ears.

Charles Ries is a troubadour for our times who graces us with stories of the seemingly commonplace. His work sings to us of love found and lost, of what it means to be a man journeying upon the earth at this moment. He weaves a spell, retracing the paths of angels who have descended into perplexing circumstances, but who nevertheless shine with the divinity of the everyday. Having been brought up Catholic, Ries resides comfortably in the realm of angels; and yet he treads the world of ordinary conundrums equally well. His work shines with what it means to be human, reflecting upon and transcending the reality in which he lives.

Kris Rued-Clark is a freelance copyeditor and an assistant editor with Free Verse, a publication out of Marshfield, Wisconsin. Her reviews and poetry have appeared in Circle, Staplegun Press, Wisconsin Poets' Calendar, and other journals.

© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.