Review: Proof

Karina Borowicz

Proof

Codhill Press, 2014

71pp

$16.00

When I was in elementary school, my grandfather had a house in Kentucky coal country. We went to visit him for a family trip once, and he woke me in the middle of the night to watch a coal train roll past, not a hundred yards from the back porch. When I read “Passage” in Karina Borowicz’s latest poetry collection, Proof, I felt as though I had been catapulted back to that night:

            […] the crushing machinery

            of distance rolls close

            and is gone with urgency

            an echo trapped

            in the stripped branches […].

And this is not a new sensation for me. Borowicz’s work has the distinction of being able to transport me--and, I suspect, other readers--not only through my own life and experiences, but through hers, as well.

This is, I suspect, thanks to her effortless way of channeling American poets of the past. Whether it’s echoes of Whitman in the way she touches on many different subjects (history, literature, astronomy, biology), dialogues with Emily Dickinson’s ghost in “Emily’s Dress,” or riffs on Robert Frost in “Saw,” Borowicz gracefully reaches back into our shared poetic archives. Yet she remains her own poet, driven by something unseen: “The invisible is calling,” she writes in “The Invisible,” and this invisible thing is, no doubt, her literary genius.

Like Whitman before her, Borowicz is not afraid to reach into her own archives for inspiration. In this case, she shares with the reader a few more of her “bee” poems, hearkening back to her prize-winning collection, The Bees Are Waiting. At the same time, she is in no way averse to moving forward, as the bird in the casually sinister lines “Each day, the woodpecker’s tapping / comes closer” from “Hunger.” Borowicz even admits she has a certain animal-like nature in “Paintbrush,” writing, “[…] I can’t help it my paintbrush / has claws and its fur keeps growing.” It is this primal feeling that pulses beneath her words.

We see this best when the contrast between Borowicz’s more controlled work and her breathless, stream-of-consciousness technique is played up. The side-by-side poems “Frozen Boot” and “Proof” display this well: in “Frozen Boot,” no punctuation trips readers up as we follow the speaker’s progress past a statue, while the measured lines of “Proof” give us a deliberately punctuated list of items left behind by a dead neighbor.

Near the end of Proof, Borowicz writes, “Have I told myself this story before?” Perhaps she has, and all the better for the reader: by the time we are lucky enough to read her lines, she has sharpened them to a gleaming point. As a result, when we encounter the declaration that St. Thérèse is “filled with rage,” we too want God to “show [us] how to make it holy.” Borowicz acts as the conduit here, giving us a glimpse into her world which is abundant with the holiness of well-wrought poetry.

“A Graven Image” provides the perfect example of this. “I want to cut the words in[to paper],” the speaker declares,

with a pin or a penknife,

            want them to be there yet

            not there, a violence apparent

            not to the eye but to wondering fingers.

After all, what could be more holy than providing solid, unmoving words for future generations of poets and readers? In this way, Borowicz earns her place in the pantheon.

-Cate-

Review: How Long the Night Is

Christine DeSimone

How Long the Night Is

Lummox Press, 2013

80 pp/55 poems

$15.00

When Christine DeSimone writes about everyday life, it feels like she means it. There is nothing forced in her descriptions, whether they are bright or painful. We see this early on in her collection, How Long the Night Is, when the speaker ends a friendship in "The Penitent" as equally as we see it when a parent experiences a peaceful moment with his daughter in "Man Returns iPad Because He Missed Being Bored." The way DeSimone crystallizes these moments is, in fact, one of her strongest assets, and she does it again and again throughout her 55 poems.

The reason I am so drawn to that as a reader is because I see myself in these poems. "If I Was a Poet" brings to mind the hours I've spent on highways: seeing people others seem not to notice and finding myself intrigued by the things they do. "You take what you find, wherever it's found," a line from "Misplaced," speaks to the writing life. The final stanza of "Quitting Smoking" makes me think of being far from home:
     but perhaps it's like the redwoods
     you've visited: between the acres of dense,
     silent trees, there are sudden patches
     of emptiness, and maybe you are alone,
     but maybe someone is thinking of you
     as they exhale into the cold between the stars.

At the same time, DeSimone is able to slip into various personae and draw me into those voices, even if I find nothing of myself in them. "Letter from Zelda," an imagined missive from Mrs. Fitzgerald to F. Scott, is the strongest of the persona poems in this collection, thanks in part to its attention to detail. Similarly, when she steps into her mother's voice in "Mother Fills Out the Restraining Order," DeSimone sheds light on the reality of abuse in a way that official paperwork never can, as evidenced by the clinical, bureaucratic excerpts presented in the poem.

The best display of DeSimone's poetic prowess, however, is "Spellcheck Suggests the Following Replacements," in which she shifts from one subject to another effortlessly based on incorrect words alone. As writers, we of course know that there is nothing effortless about it, but the fact that the poet makes it feel thus speaks volumes about her abilities. This sense of ease can be found throughout the whole collection, which is worth the read both for phrases like "My telephone rings were wolfwhistles," in "Inheritance," and for poems that are at once personal and universal.

Ray of Light, Part 5: The Conclusion

Welcome to the fifth and final installment of my Madonna series! For Part 1: An Introduction, click here. For Part 2: Tracks 1-4, click here. For Part 3: Tracks 5-8, click here. For Part 4: Tracks 9-13, click here.

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Of course, Madonna is well-known for drawing inspiration from other people--Marilyn Monroe in the “Material Girl” video (Like a Virgin), Andy Warhol on the cover of True Blue, ABBA on “Hung Up,” and so forth. Why should she not also reference herself, then? After the success of Ray of Light, Madonna became much better at doing this, perhaps because she had integrated her previous work and was fully self-actualized for the first time in her life. Prominent examples show up in obvious places, such as when she was on The Confessions Tour and folded part of the chorus of “Where’s the Party” into “Music” (Music) for an interesting mash-up. Sometimes, though, it is harder to determine at first blush. There are not always easy answers, like when a semi-continuation of “Borderline” (Madonna) makes an appearance in “Push” (Confessions on a Dance Floor).

To this day, however, Ray of Light remains the best synthesis of Madonna’s early career as well as an indication of what would come in the future. Rich Cohen argues that “Fashioning images: images that riff on Scripture, images that riff on junk, images that riff on other images--that’s been her genius.” But for this listener, it is Madonna’s ability to riff on herself that defines her. Confessions on a Dance Floor may be the best distillation of her musical efforts, but Ray of Light is a greater definition of who Madonna is, has been, and will be.

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Thanks for reading along! I hope you enjoyed this commentary, and I'd love to hear what you think about it. Comment below or e-mail me: cateismilesaway@gmail.com.

Ray of Light, Part 4: Tracks 9-13

Welcome to the fourth installment of my Madonna series! For Part 1: An Introduction, click here. For Part 2: Tracks 1-4, click here. For Part 3: Tracks 5-8, click here.

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Madonna even felt comfortable enough with her new knowledge that she managed to call out others in a state of denial in “Frozen.” “You only see what your eyes want to see,” she sings at the beginning of the song. Another lyric, “Give yourself to me; / you hold the key,” is a throwback to “Open Your Heart” (True Blue), which finds Madonna saying that “I hold the lock and you hold the key.” This exhortation to be a more receptive person is, in fact, a common theme in Madonna’s music, from “Stay” (Like a Virgin) to “I’d Rather Be YourLover” (Bedtime Stories) before Ray of Light and from “Get Together” (Confessions on a Dance Floor) to “Masterpiece” (MDNA) afterward. It is this more recent track that is easiest to connect with “Frozen,” when Madonna laments the pain that comes with “be[ing] in love with a masterpiece” who is the “look, but please don’t touch me-type,” which lines up with her declaration of frustration with a partner who is “frozen when your heart’s not open.”

Heartbreak, in fact, abounds on Ray of Light. After “Frozen” comes “The Power of Good-Bye,” an end-of-relationship anthem that finds Madonna declaring her freedom from another lover who is distant and closed off. She absorbs lessons from this decision, noting that “Freedom comes when you learn to let go; / creation comes when you learn to say no.” But this is not exactly a revelation, since Madonna explored similar themes in “Till Death Do Us Part” (Like a Prayer) nine years earlier. In that song, she realizes that her husband will not change, which is the catalyst for her leaving the relationship and letting go as she would again in “The Power of Good-Bye.” Sadly, this is a pattern for the singer, who would come to similar conclusions in “Miles Away” (Hard Candy) after another decade passed: “I can’t pretend to be someone else,” she insists, and then continues on to say that “When no one’s around and I have you here, / I begin to see the picture--it becomes so clear.” Even the affluent among us must endure life lessons, if these examples are any indication.

There is a moment on Ray of Light where Madonna achieves clarity, however, after the tumult of “Frozen” and “The Power of Good-Bye.” In “To Have and Not to Hold,” she comes to the conclusion that she is responsible for her troubles: “Like a moth to a flame, / only I am to blame” since she “go[es] straight to you.” But that does not mean she has let go of her frustrations. Rather, she spends most of the song lamenting the situation. Similar tactics were used on Erotica, both in “Waiting” and “Words.” In “Words,” she sings, “I don’t wanna hear your words; / they always attack,” hurting her the same way the paramour of “To Have” has eyes that “go right through.” Moreover, she opens “Waiting” with the very sentiment that permeates “To Have” by saying, “Well, I know from experience that if you have to ask for something more than once or twice, it wasn’t yours in the first place,” which declaration is echoed in the chorus of “To Have,’ where she sings, “I’ve been told / you’re to have, not to hold.”

Later, Madonna would revisit this theme in her disco-drenched tune “Hung Up” (Confessions on a Dance Floor), where she insists that she “can’t keep waiting for you; / I know that you’re still hesitating.” But a more powerful connection to “To Have” is found in “X-StaticProcess” (American Life). “Process” hinges on the singer’s frustration with an aloof, too-perfect Other, who makes her feel that “I’m not myself and I don’t know how.” This recalls her contention in “To Have” that no one, including herself, will be able to “break my fall.”

There is a brief respite from the sadness on the back end of Ray of Light, delivered in the form of “Little Star,” an ode to the infant Lourdes. A glittery, lightweight tune that is no less heartfelt for its sheen, “Little Star” immediately brings to mind “Cherish” (Like a Prayer). While that earlier tune focuses on romance, it also addresses the importance of love with the line “Cherish is the word I use to remind me of your love,” while Madonna instructs Lourdes to “never forget where you come from: from love” in “Little Star.” And although “Little Star” is more of a lullaby, it still has an influence on “Easy Ride” (American Life), a song about what Madonna wants for herself and her offspring: to “breathe the air and feel the sun on my children’s face.”

After “Little Star,” though, we realize why Madonna is so adamant about her daughter knowing that she is safe, beyond the obvious fact of maternal love. The final track on Ray of Light is, it turns out, a meditation on the early death of Madonna’s own mother. “Mer Girl” therefore negates the warm, fuzzy feeling the listener gets from “Little Star.” But Madonna had explored this territory earlier in her career, notably in “Promise to Try” (Like a Prayer). “Can’t kiss her goodbye,” she sings at the end of the song, “but I promise to try.” In “Mer Girl,” however, she admits that “I’m still running today.” And, like many people do with their childhood traumas, Madonna continued trying to process this. “Mother and Father” (American Life) was her next attempt, when she pulled together pieces of “Oh Father” (Like a Prayer), “Promise to Try,” and “Mer Girl” to create a fuller picture of what she had experienced, admitting that she was “a victim of a kind of rage,” which goes a long way toward explaining the images of decay and fear that crop up in “Mer Girl.” The track, however, is a fitting close to an album that starts with an examination of Madonna’s external life and then moves inward to explore her personal demons. This is her attempt at fulfilling a prophecy she made in an interview with Maureen Orth in 1992: “I will never be hurt again, I will be in charge of my life, in charge of my destiny. I will make things work. I will not feel this pain in my heart.”

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For Part 5: The Conclusion, come back on Thursday!