Book Review: Slow Boat to Samoa
By Matthew Caretti
Red Moon Press
Winchester, Virginia
2025, paperback, 128 pages
ISBN: 978-1-958408-68-1
$20 USD
Ordering Information
Reviewed by Rich Youmans
In his latest book, Matthew Caretti immerses readers into the life and lore of the Samoan islands, where he lives and teaches English at a private school in Pago Pago, American Samoa. It’s a world that runs on “island time,” where past and present interweave; where the din of tourists and cruise ships are offset by tapping mynahs and clacking geckos, chiming steeple bells and the songs of sailors and stevedores. A world filled, as Caretti writes at one point, with “visions of slow living, a long love of what has been and might again be, ever in a fine balance with the sea.”1
A prolific and lauded writer of haiku and haibun, Caretti has been living and hopping among the volcanic islands of Samoa (and Oceania in general) since 2020. He seems to have absorbed wholly the region’s spirit, through journeys seemingly fueled by a natural wanderlust and inherent sense of wonder. In an essay Caretti wrote for cho 19.2 (“Two Favorite Haibun: Travel, the Senses, and the Unfamiliar“), he likened his attitude toward travel to that of Robert Louis Stevenson (who lived his last years on one of the Samoan islands, Upolu). “I travel not to go anywhere,” Stevenson said, “but to go … The great affair is to move.” Caretti does move, and along the way has filled his travel journals with moments keenly perceived—”vibrant morsels,” as he put it—later reassembled into haiku and haibun.
That approach is evident throughout the book’s 80 haibun, which are divided into five sections. The sections are loosely assembled; some seem to emphasize daily life along the sea, others focus more on island hopping or some of the regional myths, rituals, and traditions. Regardless of groupings, they all offer proof of Caretti’s keen eye and his talent for capturing those self-described “morsels.” They also show his mastery of the condensed narrative. Caretti’s prose propels readers through layers of concentrated detail, sentences often varying from short, punchy pronouncements (“I sleep. Wake. Wait for dawn.”) to observations and descriptions that come with a poetic twist. Here is an excerpt from “Deep Port,” which won a 2024 Touchstone Award:
A ripple of harbor lights becomes some recurring dream. Moving aft and fore on this floating world, I seek to unfind my sea legs. Enter the pub. Longshoremen long off duty unloading still. With another dark n’ stormy, the barkeep serves up an attitude. Especially for the one who keeps on about the waterspout and how all the fish just landed in his boat. She turns to seamen mansplaining the supermoon. Shrugs. Asks if I’d like one for the road.
night fog
the joss sticks
refuse my fire
Over the course of the book, Caretti skips across not just the islands but also across centuries, delving at some points into the region’s history and heritage—its creation myths, embodied in the deity Tagaloa; its traditions, such as tattooing (or”tatau”); its history of volcanic upheavals both geological and cultural. In this excerpt from “Archipelago,” he recounts and condenses almost two centuries of European and American infiltration and annexation, a period that led to Samoa being divided between the United States and Germany in 1899:
redrawing old maps
remnants of
a supermoonAnd so the palagi arrived out of the vastness of le vasa loloa. In search of copra. To create coaling stations. To make a claim resting on guano. But they were not sent from heaven. Instead they rent the sky with cannon fire, provoking the old gods. Sending them into a fury of cyclones. Of sunken ships.
hem and haw
of their hackles
dawn cockerelsA trial of the ipu. A forced abdication hollowing out hallowed titles. A name without power. Old empires ceded to new. And so a united Samoa was no more. The Stars and Stripes were raised on one. That country’s symbols of strength rendered onto a new flag. The other brandishing the Southern Cross. Two Samoas.
hawsers slacken
with the tide
morning stars
Caretti may write as a traveler, looking with an outsider’s eye, but as shown above he infuses his haibun with an insider’s knowledge. He isn’t afraid to add richness through a local word or phrase (or even not-so-local—in addition to the Oceanic languages of Samoan, Tongan, Bislama/Tok Pigin, and Hawaiian, he occasionally turns to Latin and even Sanskrit). The bolding indicates that their meanings can be found in a back-of-the-book glossary . As I learned, “palagi” is Samoan for “white person,” “le vasa loloa” means “the deep ocean,” and “ipu”—”cup”—is a metonymy for Tui Manua, the oldest royal title of Samoa. The glossary is a helpful feature, although I wish the words had been arranged alphabetically rather than by order of appearance. (If I had my druthers, the book would also have included a table of contents or an index to help readers better navigate.)
While Caretti occasionally takes such forays into the past, the haibun in Slow Boat to Samoa more often present his life among the islands as “a slow chant,” a near-mystical immersion into a world that seems to run not just on its own time, but in its own dimension:
Instead of the morning bell, here the triple clack of the gecko. No bamboo blows to the trapezius, but the tumble of the tide, Wind through the palms and salt stirred into its airs. Sea guru. Sand guru. Tree guru. I sit with them. Learn from them. Breath. Body. Feeling. Mind. I press palms. Offer a prayer of thanks.2
In such pieces, Caretti shows a side of himself that seeks not just geographical exploration, but also spiritual fulfillment. As noted in his biography, he’s been influenced by a period of Zen monastic training at the Seo-un Hermitage in South Korea, followed by travels that took him to South Asia and then Africa. (His time in Africa, where he taught in and directed orphanage schools in Malawi and Lesotho, was captured in his 2022 book of haibun, Africa, Buddha.) His Buddhist beliefs seem to serve as a foundation for both his life of service and his writing, and readers will find them rippling as an undercurrent throughout Slow Boat to Samoa.
That’s particularly true in the book’s last section, where references to prayer and the eternal run deep. Caretti contemplates “the inconsolable vastness between here and there” and seems to be trying to understand his own place in the cosmos, his relationship to the world around him. The book’s last haibun, “Home Away,” begins with his preparations to visit family in the States for the holiday season, then shifts to ask a key question:
Along slow ripples in the sand I wondered, Where is home? Watched the mail plane land. Pondered after the twin prop headed to independent Samoa. Regarded thunderheads ranging on the horizon. Roused myself to rescue old luggage washed ashore.
to stay or go
a frigatebird fringes
the clouds
While the question “Where is home?” is in bold, there’s no corresponding footnote—at least not in the glossary. The answer, perhaps can be found in that quote from Robert Louis Stevenson: it’s the journey itself, the emphasis always on “go.” And Caretti is among the best at capturing the “vibrant morsels” from such journeys. Slow Boat to Samoa is a book to read, to re-read, and to savor, in “island time.”
Footnotes
1. From “The Mountains of Ta’u,” page 101, Slow Boat to Samoa
2. From “Oxygen at Sea Level,” page 105, Slow Boat to Samoa
About the Reviewer
Rich Youmans lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Alice. His books include All the Windows Lit (Snapshot Press, 2017) and Head-On (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2018). He is also the co-author, with Roberta Beary and Lew Watts, of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023), which won a Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award for Best Prose Book.