Almost daily, we experience strange juxtapositions of the traditional and the modern, the old and the new. After a yoga class, students flock to their cellphones in order to catch up to the rest of us. Ceremonial tea and aspartame-filled energy potions are served side-by-side in bustling franchised coffeehouses. And yet we usually tread these strange pairings absent-mindedly. In John Reibetanz’s eighth book of poetry, Afloat, one witnesses these types of unexpected collisions manifold, and comes away with a multi-faceted understanding of the book’s main muse: water.