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
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