Opera as the home of grand passion

Jan 16, 2008

By Jim Doubleday

I need to begin this review by declaring a personal bias. I have been a friend and colleague of Joanne Ford for almost thirty years, and I have always admired her poetry. I encouraged her to publish this collection of the poems of her life, and I even did some proofreading for the book. This review will not be a dispassionate and impartial one. And it really shouldn't be, because Joanne is nothing if not passionate. The book is entitled Eros Operatica because Joanne sees opera as the home of grand passion. However, she is also a philosopher. And the tension between passion and philosophy makes for complex and exciting poetry.

The books concept is "life's opera," and the sections are so divided: "Overture with Vamps", "Act I: Butterflights", "Act II: Bohemes", "Act III:Valkyries", "Act IV: The Dons and the Donnas", and "Finale: The Impossible Dream: Poetry and Philosophy Wed." The organization works reasonably well. There is an "Intermission," between Acts II and III, for poems that don't fit the pattern, and some of these are some of the best in the book. Here is her haiku-elegy for her cat Rasholnikov:

            Night, empty and vast:  
            no longer purring  
            old black cat.

Joanne is very good on both elegy and haiku. Here is one of the haiku "in Memory of Richard Haycraft":

            Dead at fifty-three  
            the boy who first kissed me;  
            leaf rain so heavy.

And this is the beginning of a poem on the death of Princess Di, in which a few details imply both an appearance and a personality:

            Voice-tight as the chokers of pearl  
            she preferred at her throat.  
            looking up, as always, shy-slow  
            from under many lashes

My favorite section of the book is "Valkyries." Here are the first three lines of "Snow Light":

            Through lace curtains  
            leap lean wolves  
            of winter light.

And the end lines of "The Wood-Witch Fastness":

            High, high up the trees sway preternaturally  
            and snakes slink away,  
            looking for that barely noticed small hole  
            not half-way up a blasted trunk--  
            a longing to coil  
            in that dark, cold, voluptuous hollow  
            and wait for old tides to take hold.

This poem, complete, is "The Sun's Sister":

            The fiery wheels of Apollo  
            are by stallions and eagles  
            drawn, above the turning orb.  
            But I skim black-green forest,  
            silvered ocean blue  
            pulled by one tiger-gold  
            one panther-black cat.

All any poetry book review can do is to give the reader fragments. With luck, the fragments will tease the reader into devouring the whole. I'll end this review with one of the poems in "The Impossible Dream" in which poetry and philosophy merge, "Waking Up":

            Wonderful the way  
            trees loom out of fog  
            on certain days:  
            free from the loose embrace  
            of softest space  
            they almost withstand being.

Buy the book and read it, several times over. You won't be disappointed.

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