Poetry Rules

I am very grateful to Cooper Renner, poetry editor of elimae  for having sent me a lovely rejection mail just a few days ago. He took the pain of writing back that the poems I had sent his way weren't right for the magazine, but that they were accomplished work and that he suggested I should send them to the editor of their sister magazine with his best wishes. I promptly did so and well, one of the three has been accepted to be published. I am still a novice, but I am learning a lot about the publishing world out there!  

It's been a hard choice deciding whether I should have marketed my erotic poetry with a pen name or not. I frankly believe that I have nothing to hide, but I somehow hope that this will increase my opportunities too. As my friend Kate generously pointed out, some of my works have a John Donne feel. So, the surname Marvell pays hommage to one of my favorite metaphysical poems, whereas Sasha is the nickname that Jack (Hirschman) gave me. Ever since he has called me that way. I believe that, what Kate says is particularly true insofar as the two poems that have just been published by Safeword  in their July edition is concerned. Sasha Marvell exists at last! http://www.safewordmagazine.com/

I have discovered that the poetry that works better for me is the one that--albeit metaphorically--has its deepest roots in life. I was reading this poem by Anne Sexton again a few days ago and I was struck by the cruelty it depicts. It's not about Briar Rose, or Sleeping Beauty, indeed. It's more about girls having to deal and cope with abusive fathers. Anne's strength comes alive within an armor of words. Can words be abusive? Certainly not as acts. But, even if they cannot kill they can perhaps be of help in effacing the past.  Consider a girl who keeps slipping off, arms limp as old carrots, into the hypnotist's trance, into a spirit world speaking with the gift of tongues. She is stuck in the time machine, suddenly two years old sucking her thumb, as inward as a snail, learning to talk again. She's on a voyage. She is swimming further and further back, up like a salmon, struggling into her mother's pocketbook. Little doll child, come here to Papa. Sit on ...

I found this poem by Angela Carter on the web today. It struck me with its terse words and apparent simplicity. There is a great writer's wisdom in the use of few words and strikingly compelling images. The cat with the spoon ears is just a brilliant sentence, but the last two lines literally give me goose bumps. I feel I have learnt a whole poetry lesson today. You've got a long way to go, my dear Alessandra! My cat Is the snow queen,   This frigid virgin four   Winters old crooks   Her paw to wash a face   White   As starlight, twice   As cold.   She puts back   her ears like spoons to listen to the wind   behind her. She eats   For breakfast, hearts;   For supper, northern lights.

So yesterday evening I was sitting at my table, with a glass of wine and a pad when I started skimming through my Francesca Woodman books. I was captured by her Self-Deception series and the pen started flowing to the rhythm of her black and white pictures and her twisted body. There is a strength in her work that makes it appear almost as solid as a sculpture and yet wraithlike. There is a naked truth hidden in her works that needs to be deciphered. These shots were taken in a cellar, which make them even more intriguing to me. I keep wondering whether Bluebeard was her favorite fairy tale as a kid.

    There is always a good reason to read poetry. Whether feeling happy or sad, I know I will find some solace or comfort turning the pages of a poetry book. I was watching the sunset and recalling the sunrise that saw my son and me awake earlier today. He is traveling alone and a lot of thoughts inhabit my head. It’s a strange feeling, maybe a mixed feeling of restlessness and hopefulness. I wrote some bad lines and then I picked up a book by Wisława Szymborska and at last found some truly consolatory lines that made me smile. Who does not love happy endings? CONSOLATION Darwin. They say he read novels to relax, But only certain kinds: nothing that ended unhappily. If anything like that turned up, enraged, he flung the book into the fire.    True or not, I’m ready to believe it. Scanning in his mind so many times and places, he’d had enough of dying species, the triumphs of the strong over the weak, the endless struggles to survive, all doomed sooner...

What a joy, after a move, to be able to allow one's books to breathe again. Seeing them on the shelves makes me so happy. Sometimes, unexpectantly, I find some hidden treasures. A note that a friend wrote, a postcard, a bookmark, scraps of paper. I was so happy to find in a poetry book some poems I had almost forgotten. They date back to the period in which I was attending University and I was studying American Poetry for my second year exam of American Literature. They are three poems by Robert Creeley that my Professor had translated. Great ones. I'll share one of them with you: CHAIN Had they told you, you were "four or more cells joined end to end," the Latin catena , "a chain," the loop, the running leap to actual heaven spills at my stunned feet, pours out the imprison- ing threads of genesis, oh light beaded necklace, chain round my neck, my inexorably bound birth, the sweet closed curve of fading life?