Sarah ArvioWinner of the eleventh annual Boston Review poetry contest
Introduced by John Koethe
The idea of the distinctive poetic voice, once central to the very idea of poetry, has fallen into disrepute in recent decades, perhaps because of its association with tendentious notions of authenticity in the confessional poetry of the mid-twentieth century. Yet a certain uniformity in much of the poetry written by younger American poets suggests that individual voice might be due for a revival, but freed from its association with the poet’s actual psychological self. It certainly seems central to Sarah Arvio’s poetry, which sounds like no one else’s. Yet the voice in her poems seems to emanate from a kind of psychic doppelganger, originating from an imagined self somewhere outside her and passing through her on the way to the reader. It writes the self from which it issues, rather than the other way around, and is constructed out of wordplay and verbal associations. Its remoteness from the autobiographical is implicit in this group of poems, which juxtapose the Stevensian smoothness of the tercets with a more ragged and disjunctive syntax. Most poetry involves verbal associations at the level of sound, but seldom in as undisguised a fashion as Arvio’s. The results are poems that possess both an eerie psychological presence and a blunt verbal materiality.
—John Koethe
The idea of the distinctive poetic voice, once central to the very idea of poetry, has fallen into disrepute in recent decades, perhaps because of its association with tendentious notions of authenticity in the confessional poetry of the mid-twentieth century. Yet a certain uniformity in much of the poetry written by younger American poets suggests that individual voice might be due for a revival, but freed from its association with the poet’s actual psychological self. It certainly seems central to Sarah Arvio’s poetry, which sounds like no one else’s. Yet the voice in her poems seems to emanate from a kind of psychic doppelganger, originating from an imagined self somewhere outside her and passing through her on the way to the reader. It writes the self from which it issues, rather than the other way around, and is constructed out of wordplay and verbal associations. Its remoteness from the autobiographical is implicit in this group of poems, which juxtapose the Stevensian smoothness of the tercets with a more ragged and disjunctive syntax. Most poetry involves verbal associations at the level of sound, but seldom in as undisguised a fashion as Arvio’s. The results are poems that possess both an eerie psychological presence and a blunt verbal materiality.
—John Koethe
Small War
I thought I had left behind the darkness
of the heart it was a plan leaving it
behind I planned to enter the trance of
sensual peace and fulfillment that was
my plan But the best-laid plans I say and
pause thinking it better not to mention
mice with their trail of dark images strange
scurry into dark holes the sense of un-
cleanliness the gamey smell a small-game
smell Oh there’s a better word game the game
of the heart small game that’s good too like small
arms and light weapons this is a small war
a small dark and secret war of the heart
The deer running fleet chased by the hounds
No not that game Heart war against all plan
thrusting out of its dark hole and
scurrying through the room of the life
Scurry or gallop the sound of horses’
hooves beating on the distant hill I’ve heard
that and thought they were running through my heart
Great gallop on the hill of a dark heart
Though war is too great a word even
small war when we remember the torture
chambers the real torture on the real flesh
the bullet piercing the flesh-and-blood heart
There are no words great or small to describe
the private torture of the hounded heart
No comments:
Post a Comment