Five-Minute Runyan

I'm reviewing Tania Runyan's new book of poetry, A Thousand Vessels, for Curator magazine. Here is a taste of a few points: 

From the Greek epic to the haiku, the tragic drama to the sonnet, poetry has spanned the history of literary scope as well as of social and linguistic change. In general, Americans are not writing epic poetry. Our poetry is tiny, isolated, incidental, and possibly insignificant.

Tania Runyan's A Thousand Vessels is in between the two ends of the scale of size. The book as a whole sweeps across thousands of years of Biblical history, from “Genesis” to “The Empty Tomb.” This volume gives voices to women from the Biblical narrative—Eve, Sarah, Dinah, Ruth, Esther, Mary, the woman at the well, Martha, Jairus' daughter, and Mary Magdalene. And we are also numbered in the Thousand Vessels.

Runyan is at her best with the intimate details of mothering, and the overwhelming effect of her book is to take away the differences between ourselves and Ruth, Boaz, Jairus, Mary Magdalene. The sad side of these stories haunts her verse. The "thousand vessels" are women: the fragile vials for holding tear drops, cups for wrath, vases for grief, all the way down to today when Runyan and I add our crystal agony to the shelf.

There are surprising turns in these poems, nice endings, and memorable individual lines. Her greatest strength is bringing ancient women to life through an impassive narrative voice, giving stories and characters a different color than they ever had before. And there is a large scope packed into these tiny poetic vessels.

First Review of "CADUCEUS"

I've just posted selections from L.L. Barkat's review article over on Curator.

There has been one other little tiny review of Caduceus so far, too. It is on amazon.com, and it's by one of America's great new writers, Shann Ray. I wrote a tiny blog review of his new book American Masculine, which you can read here.

So, he was gracious enough to write me an itty bitty review on amazon, which I reproduce here (with added empahses):

There is a certain topography that is associated with beauty, be it in the form of body, landscape, emotion, or spirit. In Caduceus, the gorgeously kilned book of poems by Sorina Higgins, we find the elegance and power of the word and a visual land in which we walk with open eyes. In that word and in that land, the voices of those lost and desperate, desolated or consoled, embedded in the granite of life's seemingly unconquerable forces or the water of the eternity to which we may be destined come to us like the song of a night bird. These poems, like the songs that have given us ascension from the beginning of time, beckon us toward gracefulness with ourselves and others. Sorina's book is a book of poems to carry with you. A book to open and read to a friend. A book in which the soul is given wings.

Second Review of "CADUCEUS"

L.L. Barkat is a poet, essayist, fellow staff writer at Curator, and managing editor of Tweetspeak Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press, and Every Day Poems. She has written a piece about my book, CADUCEUS. You can read her article here.

It's called "Higgins Writes the Poetry of the Gods".

I am thrilled to have such an accomplished writer say some pretty big things about my work! She is a generous person, full of boundless energy for poetry in general and poets in specific (if that's a phrase). I can't thank her enough for taking the time to read my book -- I'm sure she has piles higher than mine of stuff she must read (!) -- and to write something, anything, about what I've done.

Yet despite the grand title, I'm not convinced she thinks that I do. Write the poetry of the gods, that is.

Here are some selections from her piece. I've put into bold some phrases & sentences that stand out to me. Please take the time to go over and read her whole article!  

And if you like form- and mind-play (and other things I'm convinced I do in that collection, such as exploring faith and love and pain), please consider buying a copy of Caduceus.


“Higgins Writes the Poetry of the Gods”
by L.L. Barkat

“Caduceus? Oh, that’s the snake thing,” says my older daughter. Caduceus is the staff. It’s held by Hermes. He’s the messenger to the gods. I’m set to wondering how many people know their mythology like these kids do. 

I wonder vaguely how Sorina Higgins was raised. While some of us were sleeping through the Odyssey, had she already begun to wear the wings of either the caduceus or its bearer? 

Has anyone ever wondered how all these inadequate feathers did the job? Neither the span on the staff nor the span on Hermes’ winged heels seem fit to bear a being of that weight. It is a miracle that Hermes ever rises. 

 Higgins will face the same issue. Maybe she will never get off the ground and will simply be a writer run mad.

Higgins, like those two snakes on the staff, will demonstrate a duality throughout her collection. She works with classic forms like the sestina and the sonnet on the one hand; yet, on the other hand, she breaks form, thus bringing to light the struggle of opposites through the very structure of her work. 

Ultimately, it is this kind of form- and mind-play that a potential reader must enjoy in order to appreciate this complex collection. If you slept through [the Odyssey], just don’t mention it to Higgins.

Poetry Reading @ LV Arts

This past Sunday, I had a great time reading poems with fellow poet Ann E. Michael and answering questions asked by Randall Forte, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Arts Council. The small, delightful, engaged audience also asked questions. It was a sweet event, in the high-ceilinged, bright-whitened rooms of the Soft Machine Gallery in Allentown. I love these little reclaimed spaces. A factory dies, a warehouse is abandoned, and eventually The Arts move in and brighten and open the space again! I remember an article by Rebecca Tirrell Talbot about reclaiming spaces for the arts, and resuscitating cities in the process. Anyway, it was a really fun event in which we talked more than we read, but we got to read a few poems each, and the little crowd was most appreciative. I'm not going to try to reconstruct the event (that would be exhausting), but Ann did, so you can read her version here. I am now the proud owner of two volumes of Ann's poetry, and read nearly all of one of them on the way home, out loud, to Gary. That's because Ann & her husband also built a house, and this collection is the result of that house-building adventure! Wow. So, here's the crazy thing: I basically wrote all those poems, some almost verbatim, in my head while we were building! I just never wrote them down. And she did. And that makes all the difference. :) But seriously. She has one about installing insulation, finding out that the insulation is made of newspaper, and seeing text printed on the scraps of material. Then she thinks about how her walls are full of words. We did that, too. One Thanksgiving afternoon, a lovely warm day, I stood outside feeding bags of shredded-recycled-newspaper insulation through a blower machine while Gary guided it into the floors and eaves. And I read the scraps of text on the insulation as it went through. But by the time the long day was over, I was too tired to write a poem. And that's what happened for those several crazy years: I worked too hard to write about the work, and now that experience is gone. Sad, but true. So, go Ann!

Five-minute Wallace

I have just finished reading The Blind Contessa's New Machine by the young, beautiful, and intrepid Carey Wallace. I had the privilege of meeting Carey at an International Arts Movement event back in February (on which I reported here).

WOW.

This is the novel of the decade, folks. I'm serious. It is the most beautiful thing I've read in ages, and masterfully executed. It has the poise and control usually belonging to a much older writer, coupled with the heartaching beauty of any age that's often associated with the young.

The prose is tight and clean. The characters are sparely drawn, yet live the more fully for all that. It feels like how Hemingway would write if he were young, in love, embittered, and enamored by a nostalgic kind of taste for beauty. It has a touch of "Ever After," which was a lovely film. It's full of reflections, stars, inventions, lemon blossoms, darkness, and dreams. A book made of jewels.

Go read it!!!!!!!!!!!

Hair & Art

I've had another little piece appear in The Curator. This one is about beauty salons that display art in their space and/or host musical events that clients can look at and/or listen to while getting their hair and nails done. Have you ever been to a salon like this? Please share your thoughts!

Update to "Calling Photographers"

So, I'm working on a PPT called "Poetry, Dance, & the Patterned Glory of the Universe", and I've asked photographers to send me images. Thanks tons to those who have responded! I'll write a follow-up post later thanking each of you and linking to your websites.

For now, here's an updated list of the images I would still like to add. Are there any more intrepid photographers out there who are willing to donate a photograph or two?

I am looking for images of the following:

- a heartbeat shown on a EKG monitor
- footprints
- an Irish landscape
- an illustration for "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" by Shakespeare
- an illustration for a love sonnet set in a garden
- a picture of the 9/11 skyline
- comedy & tragedy masks
- a fist punching
- a chambered nautilus shell
- a pine cone
- Venus de Milo
- dancers in a circle
- patterns cut in ice by the blades of ice skates
- a kingfisher
- vaulted arches & buttresses in Gothic architecture

Feel free to email me (iambic dot admonit at gmail dot com) with any questions -- or with your photos! And please forward this post to any other photographers you know. Thanks!!

~ Sørina


Tweet

Share