Tuesday, June 21, 2022: Review of Kaaren Kitchell's "Ariadne's Threads"

 

Mark Twain said, “Write what you know”. With Ariadne’s Threads (© 2021 Tebot Bach Press), Kaaren Kitchell has done exactly that by crafting one of the most successful poetic today.

      Ariadne’s Threads is divided into three parts: Losing, Finding, and Roots (Family). Kitchell employs the allegory of the Greek myth of Ariadne, a Cretan princess, who, deeply in love with Theseus (who slew the Minotaur), assisted her lover with a ball of magical thread to help Theseus escape the labyrinth. The first poem, “Ariadne in the Labyrinth”, begins with the poet in a white room (or, center of the labyrinth), “stripped of all/ that wasn’t essential, every expectation, /every rigid puzzle piece”, and from there, is able to trace her life’s journey, like Ariadne’s mythical thread, through the labyrinth of her fascinating life. 

    Readers are led through, by means of Kitchell’s poetic string, a maze of beautifully spare, narrative poems that examine moments of love, loss, and self-discovery. “Losing” covers friends and lovers who have touched the poet’s life in an unforgettable way, as either a tribute to that person’s unique story or as a memento mori. “Finding”, documents the profound moments of love and epiphanies shared during Kitchell’s marriage to Richard Beban (poet and photographer, now deceased), as well as the friends and people that populated their life during those years, and “Roots”, shares the story of Kitchell’s parents and siblings, their relationships, and the love that still binds them.

    There’s one more quality that makes Ariadne’s Threads unforgettable: poetry as promise/prophecy. Bear with me, for a moment, as I attempt to explain. This is something I have seen in poetry from those who live mythically, which is to consciously live one’s life within the archetypes that one chooses to invoke. To be able to do this requires being comfortable with a multilevel view of the universe, or simultaneously addressing past/present/future events.What is remarkable, here, is the “weapon of choice”, Kitchell utilized to make this happen: an equal mixture of love, longing, and gratitude, as in her poem, “Message to Jane” (Kitchell’s sister):

Where are you now, Jane?

Have you sailed to the Milky Way?

Do you dwell in the heart of our galaxy,

Winking at us from Sagitarrius?

Do you know what you are to me?
Can you feel my gratitude?

I see you walking in beauty still in

at home in the immensity,

visiting me in dreams.

Today is your birth day

but you are beyond measure,

pouring your light into the eternal flow.

12 December 2013

    It can be said, in the broadest sense, that all poetry is biography. But few collections make the case for this truth as well as Ariadne’s Threads. If you spend the rest of your life looking for answers, pick up Ariadne’s Threads, and open it to any page. You won’t be sorry.

Ariadne’s Threads, Kaaren Kitchell, © 2021 Tebot Bach Press (www.tebotbachpress.org), ISBN 978-1-939678-8-2, 122 pgs, $17.00 (US).

© 2022 marie c lecrivain

Larry Colker's Amnesia and Wings

O misbegotten fool

in pool of inklings

things cannot be clear... - “Lyric”/Amnesia and Wings

Above is a gorgeous snippet of poetry from Larry Colker’s debut collection, Amnesia and Wings (© 2013 Tebot Bach Press). Most first collections are heavily laden with verse. To be honest, this handicap can turn off a reader to a poet’s future work. The opposite is true with Colker’s collection: 32 poems bound into one slim volume - which, in point of fact, turns out to be the perfect amount of poetry.

Colker, a careful bard, writes with the artful restraint of a man who's lived most of his life walking a fine line between the mundane and waking worlds. Like an alchemist, Colker has distilled his life experiences (mostly about love, and up to this point), into a series of beautifully written poems that are a genuine pleasure for the reader in which to immerse herself. Colker’s not afraid of linguistic gymnastics; quite a few of his poems could be put down to workshop exercises, but a touch of self-deprecating humor saves the day, as in the piece “Lunch Poem”:

Today I’m eating Brazilian,

three kinds of meat on a

skewer.

Big knife!

The woman I nearly started an affair with

was - is -

Brazilian.

Big knife!

She tasted like this fried banana,

sugary, fragrant, yielding,

slick.

Big knife!

I tried to give my marriage another chance;

kissed artistic, sexy, portugues-inflected Amalia

good-bye.

Big knife!

While the theme of love dominates Amnesia and Wings, Colker also explores other avenues; family (“Projector”), mythical archetypes (“Eros in the Heartland,” “Legend”), and the growing sense of one’s own morality (“China,” “Crossing Over (Exhibit #204)”). Though Colker is careful, he's not sparing of himself or his subjects. Each poem is bracketed by the conviction of a man who has no qualms in sharing and accepting the variegated, truthful totality of a fascinating and well-lived life. Few contemporary poets are capable of making that commitment to themselves or to their work.

Amnesia and Wings deserves a place on every poet’s bookshelf.

Amnesia and Wings,  © 2013 Larry Colker, Tebot Bach Press, ISBN 978-1-893670-6-31, 45 pages, $16.

Article content © 2013 marie lecrivain

poetic content © 2013 Larry Colker