"Like Lorine Niedecker, who was born by and sworn to the Rock River, Soham Patel takes water as their teacher in this study of bonds, of what ties us to each other in this world in which 'our narrative is not ours alone.' Pieced together like a daybook, paced like a travel journal, this book tracks a migratory life of 'departures, arrivals, departures.' Its disparate modes and voices are united in their concern with place, poetry, relation, and ethics—and the Great Lakes are never far away, either. While it critiques capitalism, empire, and settler colonialism, all one in the end—/water also offers a record of complicities acknowledged and responsibilities taken. Its gracious pages honor the fluid bonds of sexuality and family, friendship and care, culminating in the kind of wild hopefulness only poetry can offer."
—Brian Teare