Shopping for International Women’s Day

by Carolyn Boyd

This International Women’s Day, I plan to celebrate with one of my favorite activities: shopping. I don’t mean at the mall; I mean on the internet, buying magnificent works of art created by women all over the world as a means to their economic, social, and political independence. By doing so, I will not only be enabling women to support themselves, but also bringing back a very ancient kind of women’s art and empowerment.

Women have always created great art. Of course, the spectacular embroidery, quilting, weaving, painting on functional objects, and other arts that have been women’s specialties in the home are called “crafts,” while work done for pay outside the home, more frequently by men, is known as “art.”

One way to bring honor back to traditional women’s art while improving women’s lives is by purchasing our clothes, home goods, foods, and other items through “fair trade” or other similar organizations. These groups providing opportunities for the women who make the art they sell to support themselves and their families, sometimes leave abusive homes; educate themselves and their children; gain self respect; and form bonds with the other women with whom they work.

We who buy what they make are lucky enough to surround ourselves with hand-created beauty and symbols of sisterhood, hope, and empowerment. As I write, a red basket made by women from Rwanda graces my file cabinet; beaded necklaces from Uganda swirl in my jewelry bowl; vests, pants and dresses from India hang in my closet; wooden bracelets from Nepal click on my wrist; soup mixes from Chicago sit in my sister’s kitchen; and a purse made by a teen in a residential program in my town lies in my closet.

Each day we are given more choices of where we can purchase such art. Organizations that are designated “fair trade” have committed to a variety of business practices, including providing a reasonable wage, safe working conditions, and opportunities for advancement; equal treatment of women; and environmental sustainability, among others. Many of these organizations have both men and women artists. Ten Thousand Villages at http://www/tenthousandvillages.com and A Greater Gift at http://www.agreatergift.org both offer a variety of items from around the world.

Some organizations provide goods made exclusively by women. Http://globalsistergoods.com offers jewelry, accessories, and home decorating items made by women from many nations. Http://beadforlife.org sells beaded jewelry made by women from Uganda. Http://www.marketplaceindia.org has a variety of clothing and home decor made by women from India. The Women’s Bean Project at http://womensbeanproject.com sells food products made by U.S. women. Finally, feminist organizations like the Feminist Majority Foundation, at http://store.feminist.org, sometimes offer products by women as part of their mission.

So often the economic system works to exclude and impoverish women. By buying women’s art through these organizations, we can form a very global special circle of women that has economic, political, and spiritual impacts. This International Women’s Day, it’s time to shop!

Writing on the Line: The Poetry and Life of Alda Merini

by Shannon K. Winston

Alda Merini, born in Milan in 1931, published her first poetry collection, La presenza di Orfeo, when she was only twenty-two. By and large, her poetry is characterized by a deep ambiguity. While her early poems are filled with hope and love, her later collections, especially Tu sei Pietro (1962), exhibit a more angst-ridden and troubled Merini. After suffering from mental breakdowns, she intermittently spent time in asylums, especially after the death of her husband in 1986 (O’Brien, 174, 177, 181). Merini’s struggle with her mental illness, her desire for a “normal” life, and her longing to be loved all come to shape her poetry (O’Brien, 177).

One theme that resurfaces in Merini’s writing over and over is the precariousness of life. Overall, Merini’s writing is modest and the “I” is diminished and private. In her poem “Confessione,” published in 1948, for example, she opens: “You always ask me,/ but I don’t live a continuous life;/ I will nourish you with only small instances”) (all translations mine) (Merini, “Confessione,” 1-3). These “instances” are the central theme of the poem, which is only twelve lines long and could be considered only an “an instance” itself. Love and life, the speaker reminds readers, are transient in the face of death. In addition, this poem, published only several years before she began to suffer from mental illness, could also testify to the fact that sanity and “normal life,” for Merini, is also fleeting. The speaker continues: “I am the apparition that disperses/and the time that exists between two moments/ is a truce in death’s favor” (Ibid, 4-5). Within these lines, she wavers in a liminal space between life and death. Yet, her sense of helplessness is interrupted, if only for a second, by a moment of tenderness and love. The speaker continues: “I live in the space of an exchange: you age me without realizing it/ under the heat of your caresses.”

Catherine O’Brien writes of Merini’s work: “[Her] poetry reflects her intention of highlighting her inner self but his effort causes her bitter disillusionment and grief as she waits for someone capable of understanding her” (O’Brien, 180-181). What renders Merini’s work so compelling is that despite her struggle with a mental illness and her proclivity to write about death, she still finds glimmers of hope, which is apparent in several of her poems. When speaking to Catherine O’Brien, she complained: “They ask me often what the asylum is like, but no one asks me about what it’s like to be alive. Life is part of the asylum because it’s in this unholy and abject place that I found life” (Ibid, 185). She, thus, uses poetry and the page as a creative place in which to negotiate and embrace the intense joys, loves, and anguish that define her life.

Ilene Sova

A Talk with the Artist

The gaze from a painting often captivates people. Books have been devoted to the Mona Lisa’s playful and observant eyes. We often want to avoid the eyes from a portrait that seem to follow us around the room. Some faces stare or smile at us so that we wish to know more about the people behind all of that paint—the artist and model(s). We want to hear their stories.

Canadian painter Ilene Sova focuses on portraiture of women as well as expressing a shared female experience. On her website, she says that women are often censored by their cultures and society, afraid to tell their own life challenges and joys. As her Artist Statement says, Sova’s work has evolved from “telling the untold negative stories of the female experience” to including “a stronger, more confrontational protagonist.”

Sova also expresses the limitations concerning women as fine artists. She writes in an e-mail, “I often find when we speak about our careers the impression is always of lesser or ‘the other’ or ‘the exception’ in terms of how we are viewed (ie. when [I] meet someone new and…say, ‘I am a painter.’ People will often respond with ‘oh how much money do you make painting houses?’ It doesn’t occur to them that I could be a fine artist—it is reduced always to the lesser position.”

The limiting inferences, often made by people about women artists, guide Sova to express the social constrictions within her paintings of women. On her website, we find that women are “at a high disadvantage in the art world” with “only 1 in 10 female artists… actually…becom(ing) a professional artist” and “only 10% of the art in modern sections of museums… (being created) by women.”

Sova paints multiple works in order to create a series. Usually, the series has a common theme with different women models for each painting. In her new Untitled series, Sova’s models capture the viewer. The direct and intimate gaze captured in most of the paintings allows the viewer to interact with the subjects in the paintings. It’s as though you are passing by one of the women on a cold and windy street or you are sharing an intimate conversation with another woman or turning to receive a fleeting, goodbye glance. The paintings bring us into a personal space with each woman. Sova projected a psychological mood into each painting. Not only do the expressions on the faces of the women conjure a change in attitude, but the highlighting colors of Sova’s palette effect the model and the viewer of the paintings. “Katherine” seems to communicate a sad innocence. “Emily” gives us an uncertain but curious side-ways question, while “Lola” shares a smile of confidence and determination.

As compared to Sova’s previous series, the women’s faces in the new work are physically closer. Like the women in her previous paintings, these women stare into the eyes of the beholder. The new women are also larger than her previous work (the paintings measure 36×36 centimeters), a scale that she intentionally sought as an expression of her ideas. It was so important to this series that when I failed to discuss it in our phone interview, Sova wrote to me about it later:

“I have always been thinking a lot about women and their relationship to the size of their body and the idea that there is so much pressure for women to be smaller (loose weight etc) in popular culture. This essentially equates to taking up LESS SPACE. And in terms of how this could work on a psychological level—always wanting to be smaller and not take up too much space in a room or in relationship to other people.

“The second thing is that women are often being ‘reduced to the smallest denominator’ in how they are treated in language and culture in general (eg. A kitchenette has the feminine ‘ette’ attached to it because it is smaller and less, in turn less important and useful than it’s opposite word ‘kitchen’….So—having said all that…the scale is to make women more improtant, take up more space, be larger than life, become giants, be monumental, and in doing so increase their importance in a culture that is constantly trying to make them smaller.”

In her earliest work, “epic series” (1996-2000), the models are placed within a dark, domestic setting that seems to close in around them. The two following series question identity and appearance by utilizing symbols of pop culture. In “Blue Wig Series” (2000) and “Tiara Series” (2001), the women in the portraits face the camera wearing either a blue wig or a tiara. The position of the models against a flat, solid color background is reminiscent of mug shots and/or passport photos.

Sova says about this “deliberate choice” that she was affected by Barbara Kruger’s image “No Progress in Pleasure”, which includes the text “Your gaze hits the side of my face.” Sova points out that women in art history are painted from the male gaze. “It’s usually that the women are not looking at the viewer,” she says during our phone interview. “They are turned away. I made a very deliberate choice for my women to be looking directly at you and to be confrontational.”

The series “Engaged in Transit” (2001-2004) shows a series of women each in front of a different Toronto subway stop (the name of the stop is behind them). This series, as well as “Berlin Series” (2006), focuses on women in particular places, even if Sova doesn’t include scenes from that place. The women represent an urban space. The “Berlin Series” demonstrates Sova’s desire to communicate the strength of women in their environments. On the website, she writes that these women “who had grown up (until adolescence) in a divided country…had amazing confidence and eloquence in vocalizing their views” (concerning “German feminism, racism, and the immigration policies in Europe.”) She continues to communicate strength in her new series; however, the changes in her painting techniques are evident.

View Image Gallery

During my phone conversation with Ilene Sova, I learned that she painted the new series of 9 paintings within a prolific two weeks. She said, “I’ve been obsessed. I’ve been waking up at 7 a.m. and waking up in the middle of the night, thinking about brush strokes.”

On the invitation to her Salon Show, during which she unveiled the new series, Sova named the Salon Show: “1875-2008 Salon Show Inside My Studio—A Record of a Crisis and Its Solution.” I wondered about her crisis and discovered that it concerned brush strokes, a John Singer Sargent-inspired palette, and other technical elements of portrait painting that didn’t allow for a lot of sleep. When asked about the crisis, Sova said, “For years, I have been painting portraits like you saw on my website. This is a lot about technique, not so much about content…I would always have an interesting idea, but I didn’t feel like the paint was painted interestingly, so I wanted a balance between interests. So that when you look at my work, you might get excited about the concept, but also I wanted people to be excited by the aesthetics of the paint and also for me to be more present in the work. The action of painting to be more present. When you look at it, maybe I’m also there in the image. So, you see a gestural brush stroke…and you imagine me making that brush stroke. In the summer, I was painting…and I was trying to make things more gestural and more dynamic, but the face was falling apart—it wasn’t holding together.

“I had this show about identity and had dressed my roommate up in all these different urban, female identities, so there was a business woman, hippie, fashionista, hipster, and I had painted her in all of these costumes, so it was like an installation…talking about how inside one woman there’s all different types of personalities and yet we are peg holed into one or the other. And I had this show at this very prominent gallery with these works. When I was at the show, I, all of the sudden, hated my paintings, so I had this crisis. I didn’t like the way that the faces were painted or the flesh was painted. I was very upset. I thought, well I can either just stop painting…or I can find a solution to the problem. I was thinking a lot about art history and training and I thought, maybe I need to go backwards in order to go forward. I was searching out a classic portrait painter….The solution was that I had to go back in time to learn this old method of painting in order to go forward.” She chose to go backwards under the tutelage of John Singer Sargent in order to master her methods.

Since we were discussing technical elements, I wondered about the significance of the flat, solid-colored backgrounds in Sova’s paintings. She said, “In terms of the history of my work, you’ll see that the first time I did those backgrounds was with the blue wig paintings, and this was a huge change between those dramatic, dark, psychological interiors ["epic series"]…. I’m a very contemporary person and love pop culture and pop art and graphic images. As I was growing up—I was looking at my old sketchbooks as a child—I was always drawing women, even from when I was five years old, drawing women…and I was always looking at fashion magazines to draw the figure cause I didn’t really have anything else to look at….And I think that this [the solid backgrounds in the paintings] comes from advertising and fashion editorials. It’s very basic in the background and references pop culture in contemporary times….

“The most recent trend in image making from popular culture is to simplify everything. We are just getting bombarded by so much information all of the time that people have become poster blind. When you actually see an image that’s simplified, it grabs your attention more than one that’s over-labored or has too much information. I’m very drawn to that kind of imagery…very basic, very stark, high contrast, simple and to the point. And I think very critically about advertising. I do workshops with youth about how to break down advertising methods….”

For the new, Untitled series, the blank background seems to work differently for the viewer. Instead of simply being a plane for contrast, the backgrounds allow the viewer space to create a scene that accompanies each woman. Each painting communicates a story that the viewer imagines and sets into motion. While all of Sova’s previous work communicates either psychological oppression and/or strength in confrontation and/or a unique expression in spite of mass production, the gazes from the women in the new, Untitled series appear more intimate and interactive.

-Shana Thornton-Morris

Antonella Anedda: Encounters with Silence, the Page, and the World

by Shannon K. Winston

Antonella Anedda, one of today’s most prominent and promising Italian women poets, once called poetry her “reality.” In that same interview with Niederngasse in 2006, she explains that poetry is “the way [she has of] opening [herself] to the world, with verses, with rhythms that [she has] in [her] head and it is on this score that [she works] when [she writes] on the page” (translation mine). For Anedda, poetry is therefore an implicitly musical genre that unfolds on a register that differs from prose; it allows for a greater space of silence, contemplation of human existence, and death. The speaker of “Nocturnes,” for example, urges the reader to “Accept this silence: the world caught in the dark of/ the throat like a stiffened animal, like/ the stuffed boar that sparkled in the cellar during/ October storms” (Poetry International Web). Night, just like writing itself, becomes place not only reflection but also of a critical examination of the self and its position in an increasingly volatile world. In fact, many of Anneda’s work is grounded in ethical concerns about war and injustice, which are the central themes of Notti di pace occidentale. Rather than assuming a safe and privileged position within work, Anedda and her speaker are deeply entangled in the struggles that she grapples with. She ties contemporary and literal wars with her battle with language in the poetic process. In “This language has no innocence,” her speaker begins: “This language has no innocence/ listen to how speeches break up/ as if also here there were a war” (www.lyrikline.org). How, she seems to ask, can the poet and reader remain innocent in a world where there is injustice? Here, like elsewhere in her poetry, Anneda complicates issues of agency, guilt, and hope for a more peaceful future. Here, however, her hope is intermingled with doubt that she, as a poet, can effect change: “I write with patience/ to the eternity I don’t believe in./ Slowness comes to me from silence” (16-1Cool (Ibid)). Silence, then, becomes a predominant theme in Anedda’s work as the place where change becomes possible.

Another distinguishing feature of Anedda’s poetry is the diminished “I” of the speaker. Rather, the “I” becomes a distanced observer that attempts—but sometimes fails—to grasp the present moment/moments in the poem. “I don’t like invasiveness,” she says and then goes on to say: “I don’t like texts in which the narrative “I” is too present, in which [the “I”] confesses itself” (Niederngasse). This distancing mode is prevalent in Anedda’s entire corpus and reflects her greater poetic vision “to write in order to disappear, so that life is revealed to [her], without [her], [her] face at last more blurred than the whiteness of the paper, bereft of reflection. A world where one can forget oneself. Not a mirror, but a stone” (Poetry International Web).” For Anedda then, poetry and truth—as it leads to a greater understanding of the world—emerges out of a desire to capture more than individual experience; it reaches beyond the self and the page to grapple with both contemporary and timeless struggles that continue to shape our existence. In undertaking this task, Anneda writes with a grace and humility that cannot help but to enthrall readers.

For more information on the life and works of Antonella Anedda, please visit Poetry International Web.

Full Circle Exhibition

1875 – 2008 Salon Show

Full Circle: A Tribute to the Cultural Diversity of Women’s Art, Pen and Brush, New York

About Pen and Brush

“I think we have one of the best of the women’s arts organizations that I know of,” says Janice Sands, Executive Director of Pen and Brush. I’ll go out on a limb and say we have the most diverse exhibitor base of any of them. And from other art organizations that are as old as the Pen and Brush, I will also go out on a limb and say far and away we have the most diverse.”

Sands adds, “When I started at the Pen and Brush ten years ago, there was a real sameness to a lot of the work. Very traditional, very representational. And we’ve come a very long way. If you look at the shows and what you will see when you come in compared to what you would have seen ten years ago, it would be completely unrecognizable to you. For one thing, there were no such things as exhibitions for women of African descent. There was no such thing of an exhibit in celebration of women’s history month. Those things didn’t exist.”

Later this month the Pen and Brush will host a brunch with Molly MacGregor, the Executive Director and Co-founder of the National Women’s History Project. Participants will be able to view the Tribute to Cultural Diversity of Women’s Art exhibition, and then gather together for a bus trip to the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum to view Judy Chicago’s ‘Dinner Party.”

Founded in 1894, the Pen and Brush is housed in an elegant brownstone in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. The not-for-profit organization is comprised of women professionally active in the literary, visual, and performing arts. The goals: to promote women in the arts, foster high standards of aesthetics and craftsmanship, to develop the professional activities of its members, and to educate the general public about the significance of art in personal and community life.

Throughout most of the year, exhibitions of paintings, graphic art, mixed media, photographs, sculpture, and crafts are held in the galleries. Poetry, prose, and play readings, lectures, demonstrations, concerts and receptions are regularly scheduled. Other activities include meetings, discussions, and receptions.

And Full Circle? “Planning this [exhibition] is great fun,” says Sands, “and the reward is to walk through the space before we open to the public and get a kind of private look at the show. I would say that almost everything that we’ve done in the past couple of years has been really, really rewarding. The work’s gotten better and better. Not just in terms of its quality and proficiency, but in the diversity of the work. And the only way to get that is to have the broadest possible call for artist participation.” The Pen and Brush invites any woman to become a member

It is Her Circle Ezine’s pleasure to introduce this exclusive online engagement of Full Circle: A Tribute to the Cultural Diversity of Women’s Art to you today.

View Image Gallery

Pen and Brush Celebrate the Opening of Full Circle Exhibit

Full list of winners:
First Place: Hunter Clarke, “Bestiarium: Parental Instincts 3″
Second Place: Lynne Miller, “American Still Life”
Third Place: Barbara Seewald, “Silent Knight”
Honorable Mention: Dafna Grossman, “Untitled – 01 Right”
Honorable Mention: Kathryn Wagner, “Curtain (2005)”

Deborah Jack, Juror of Awards

Deborah Jack is an artist whose work is based in video/sound installation, photography, painting, and text. Her current work deals with trans-cultural existence, memory, the effects of colonialism and mythology through re-memory. Her work was included in the 2007 Brooklyn Museum Exhibition Infinite Island: Contemporary Art. She has published two poetry collections, The Rainy Season (1997) and skin (2006). Her poetry has appeared in The Caribbean Writer and Calabash and she has recited her work in the Caribbean, United States, South Africa and the Netherlands.
Awards and honors include a Caribbean Writers Institute Fellow, University of Miami, Prince Bernard Culture Fund grants, University of Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship, Photography Institute-National Graduate Seminar Fellow, Lightwork Artist-in-Residence, Syracuse University, CEPA Exhibition Award, New York Foundation of the Arts SOS grant, and a Big Orbit Gallery Summer Residency. Her work has been exhibited in St. Martin, the United States, and Europe. Jack is also a member of art collective the Evolutionary Girls Club. Her work is part of the Lightwork collection, the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University, the collection of the Island Government of St. Martin and several private collections. Deborah Jack is an Assistant Professor of Art at New Jersey City University.

Fifth Annual Women’s Show at VARGA

by Lynn Alexander

The VARGA Gallery of Woodstock, New York, recently concluded the annual Women’s Show–an event showcasing more than thirty artists of diverse styles and themes. The show featured a solo exhibition by surrealist visionary Cristine Cambrea and Corinne Dolle, (a.k.a. Coco), whose pin-ups have appeared in The Village Voice and The New York Times. In addition the show also featured workshops and opportunities for audience participation, all elements that make the Women’s Show and the VARGA Gallery must-see features of Woodstock.

Cristine Cambrea is a Vermont-based artist and self-described surrealist visionary. In 2007 she sold-out a six-week solo show in NYC’s Meatpacking District. She has upcoming exhibits in New York City and London, and opened The Cambrea Stone Gallery in Vermont with her husband, independent filmmaker Drew Stone. Her paintings are “a map of experiences, feelings and energy and the relationship between their physical, emotional and energetic environments.

VARGA, owned by Christina Varga, is not your mother’s gallery. In addition to providing a creative outlet for emerging artists, Christina’s vision includes representation of “outsider” artists, self taught artists, and artists who are often overlooked by the so-called mainstream art establishment because they lack the credentials or formal training often seen as necessary to the successful execution of creative work. Of equal concern to Varga is the rather exclusive nature of the art world and the traditional lack of female representation. Angered by what she describes as “disdain” for such artists, she became committed to an inclusive vision for her own gallery.

“There is certainly a greater respect for outsider and self-taught artists now than 10 years ago, but I was turned off from approaching galleries from a few experiences…and being treated with disdain. It’s the disdain that chaps my ass. I can’t stand it. So when I opened my gallery I knew that I did not have the “credentials” to decide which art was acceptable in the art world’s eyes and which art was credible and salable. I never had aspirations to be exclusive, as in to exclude people. Obviously I make some decisions as to what I find  aesthetic, but more important to me is nurturing the creative spirit in artists, especially self-taught, outsider and visionary artists. These kinds of artists are VISIONARIES.”

Her desire to create an outlet for showcasing female artists remains a driving force behind the highly successful Women’s Show, which has enjoyed tremendous popularity for more than five years. Yet Varga maintains that she is not interested in propagating separation along gender lines, but rather in working together to find common ground while cultivating shared creative spaces. In her support of self taught and outsider artists, Varga expresses a specific interest in the work of those she refers to as “visionary” individuals, whose contributions she feels are necessary to achieve societal transformation and transcendence of cultural barriers. She believes that every major leap in understanding has been accompanied by creative work, and that the nurturing of this work is an essential part of what it means to support art as an aspect of social change.

“I believe we are in a transformative period in our consciousness,” says Varga, “ and the growing pangs of evolution come through most readily in the creative processes of humankind. Every major leap in understanding and consciousness is accompanied by art and creativity and I seek to support the conscious leap from dark and churlish war-ridden fear mongering to an acceptance and understanding that each and every one of us are connected, speak a universal language and that art transcends all communication barriers. Upon seeing, or in the case of blind or visually impaired people, feeling, we are communicating with others. Specifically, I feel a need to support women artists because I know through the years it has not been easy for them to come up through the oppressively male dominated art world.”

The Women’s Show featured selections from the travelling art exhibit called “1 in 8: The Torso Project” founded by Pam Roberts.

In selecting work for the Women’s Show at VARGA, the goal was to include work with a message, but also to allow the exhibits to stand on their own, imparting the artist’s intentions. While many do center on a particular issue, such as selections from the “1 in 8 Torso Project” about survivors of breast cancer, Varga refrains from trying to characterize women’s art as limited in scope or content. She does not try to define what women’s art “should be,” but rather aims to support expression as it is and as defined by the artists themselves. (Interview Questions, Christina Varga)

“I don’t think women’s art should be anything in particular. I am often surprised by the work women create, and a lot of it can be quite dark. But on an intuitive level I think that women are very sensitive to emotional context; their works are packed with feeling and they stand on their own.”

This emphasis on the voice of the artist, whether established or emerging, is an aspect of Varga’s vision that resonates with many women, who are tired of the obligatory characterizations or defiance of notions about what women’s art is “supposed” to focus on. Many women might also respond to her message about the validity of the self-taught artist, and the convergence of our history with grassroots communities in response to creative and political marginalization. While it is true that acceptance for outsider art has grown tremendously and that the participation of women in the arts has increased, there is still an aspect of rebellion and self determination to these movements that form a part of an honored legacy for which galleries like VARGA continue to pay tribute.

Bad Karma: Confessions of a Reckless Traveler in Southeast Asia by Tamara Sheward

Academy Chicago Publishers, 2005
Review by Cheryl A Townsend

A travelogue of hilarious and sometimes perilous escapades for the adventurous woman

Tamara Sheward is an Aussie-born adventurer with a penchant for taking the road less traveled when vacationing. When she overhears a fellow Aussieman talk of his travels in remote areas of Asia, she immediately calls up Elissa, her backpacking travel partner. Tamara is between jobs and El is on summer vacation from teaching. It’s a must go and they do. Herein begins a vacation of perpetual “Bad Karma“ segues.

What follows is a lively recap of monk flashings in Udon Than, risky rent-a-heap planes, “Chicken innards on a stick“ kiosks, inane phrase book entries put to use in Bangkok, horrid disco bands in Laos, hitchhiked booze-running to Khe Sanh Hue, a boat-ride to total debauchery, cursing a family in Saigon, visiting a temple with Victor Hugo as one of their saints, getting stuck in a sniper tunnel in Viet Nam, and finally meeting up with their initiator in Cambodia.

Tamara writes with a jovial style one could easily envision conversed over drinks at a local tavern, especially as most of the adventures were centered around imbibing. Her camaraderie and bawdiness reminds me of the acidic wit of Dorothy Parker while still getting the vital points across. Picturesque and anthropologically intriguing, this is how all travel books should be penned. Tamara is a risk-taking, intent on annoying, penny-pinching trailblazer for the rest of us cruise ship wimps. While I doubt I’ll have the guts to go her route, I assuredly applaud her audacity for making her own history so appealing.

Tamara has a travel journal website.

Defying the Eye Chart by Marilyn Jurich

Mayapple Press, 2008
Reviewed by Rachel Dacus

Opening this book at random, I was struck by the prevalent combination of frankness and expressiveness in these poems. The first poem I read, “25 Lines for Ascending and Descending Keys,” compelled because of its overarching music metaphor of piano keys and also because of its jazzy language and eccentric rhythms. Using music to dramatize a backward look at one’s childhood is a fresh and clever idea that seems to characterize a central quality of Marilyn Jurich’s poetry.

The poet addresses her child self with both compassion and reproach in these lines:

The eight-year-old rises, sticks out her tongue.
I (the she who used to be) refuse this mockery,
defeat – begin to practice “holds.”
I taunt, “I’m better than what you could become”

She continues the reflective review in a rueful self-duet: “You’d be much better now if you’d listened/ all those years, not closed your ears on me.”

The musical versatility of many of these lines reminds me of the imagistic surprises of Wallace Stevens and the verbal adroitness of Elizabeth Bishop. Jurich defiantly eschews the flatness current in so much of today’s poetry, and opts instead for often surreal imagery and dense language. I found her voice at its most original in poems combining these two qualities, as well as often incorporating myth – such lyrical pieces as “Oedipus Visits the Ophthalmologist,” “Prayer Addict” and “Planetary Pantoum, Glyphs on Mars.” The latter poem’s setting is strangely beautiful and repellent at the same time: “Across Phobos, fearful rock-fish moon,/ grooves tilt, repeat in narrow bands.”

poet describes other worlds – whether they are Mars or he Irish Jewish Museum in Dublin – in pithy mouthfuls. Jurich’s poems sometimes reminded me of English poet Alice Oswald’s linguistic and landscape fantasies. She uses even punctuation as a type of music in the following passage, whose uneven rhythm suits the exotic subject of a Martian landscape:

Like petaled comets, whorls lift from the crater.
Spiraling canyons above, colossal pyramids;
aureole fluting plays on polar ice-caps,
Sudden … mist, clouds massed like granite, wind.

Defying the Eye Chart is long for a poetry book (113 pages) and the focus broad (with seven different sections), but the length is justified by its honest, musical look at life and history, both personal and collective. This is poetry that makes no bones about life’s hard realities – aging, blindness, disability – but who avoids lament and rather sounds the wiser notes of praise, appreciation and laughter. There is elegance and sincerity here. Marilyn Jurich writes her own review in two lines from the poem, “Reading the Eye Chart”: “Unraveling my soul by what I see/ you count how close I come to hold desire.”

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