Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 5, 1995                   TAG: 9502040010
SECTION: BOOK                    PAGE: F-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY JUSTIN ASKINS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FOR LEMBKE, `TO SKINNY DIP IS TO DROWN IN BLISS'

Like her earlier ``River Time,'' ``Skinny Dipping'' shows Janet Lembke's uncanny ability to blend the mythological and the mundane.

Referring to her visit to some strange and uninhabited island clusters south of New Zealand, Lembke, a well known translator of Greek and Latin classics, says, ``I subscribe to the archaic Greek conviction that everything is sacred in its own right.'' Her list includes ``sea lions, albatrosses, tarnished-silver rabbits, rata trees, and giant purple flowers, oozy peat,'' her fellow travelers and even more: ``Nor does it matter if the object be alive or dead, or if it never lived at all. My list, therefore, falls short without such items as bleached sea lion bones, wave-rounded rocks, sleet driven hard on a howling summer wind, and, yes, young Garry's blue umbrella.''

Recalling the reverential emphasis of any number of traditional cultures, Lembke's archaic conviction allows her an integrating perspective, where the tidal nooks of her beloved Lower Neuse can offer up as many wonders as an exotic New Zealand archipelago.

The central metaphor for the essays in ``Skinny Dipping'' comes from the title: ``skinny dipping is the most completely sensuous experience available to humankind.'' Available almost anywhere, water ``sparkles and swirls, surges and lapses. It splashes, rushes over rocks, whispers, breaks, and bubbles. It fills noses and mouths with a bromine reek, a coolness of trout and algae-covered stones, a tidal potpourri of seaweed, fish, and salt. And when it touches us, it drenches our bodies, every pore, every nerve, every last cell, with the purest pleasure. To skinny-dip is to drown in bliss.''

As a devout skinny dipper who, after an hour or two of strenuous hiking, regularly indulges in icy mountain pools, I can only applaud Lembke's sentiments.

While devotees of the dip need no metaphysical justification, for Lembke, however, the rewards go much further: ``I know from long indulgence that some of the best and barest splashing comes without any water at all. Without any water, that is, except the stuff that seeps up quietly in memory or makes a flinging, springing rush through imagination. Nor is it necessary to take off one stitch of clothing. The only things that need to be shed are the habits that sometimes keep attention gliding straight down an easy, familiar route rather than letting curiosity make side excursions into the backwaters, streamlets, and swamps on either hand.''

This deeper resonance pervades the volume, memory and imagination as sacred and liberating places, where tiny occurrences on Virginia's Bullpasture River or North Carolina's Lower Neuse can inspire as much as otherworldly incidents on the River Styx.

It is always rewarding to read Janet Lembke. After all, how many writers can offer, with seeming effortlessness, continual gems like this: ``a still and breathless summer afternoon, its blue sky innocent of clouds, and a silence broken only by cicadas and the milk cows lowing in the back pasture of my father's farm.''

Justin Askins teaches at Radford University.