Martine Bellen’s fabulous new collection GHOSTS!
is a mosaic fable of descent and return in which
a postmodern Cinderella who “likes to fuck and
fuck” seeks a door for which she is emotionally the right size. It is a book of loss, in which lovers and fathers turn to ghosts and join with the winds, and also of redemption and recovery. The imagination fiercely demands to “re-member” what has been torn to pieces. Like the poet H.D., to whom she pays tribute in the beautiful first poem, Bellen displays purity, even gnosticism, of thought. The doors of passage swing both ways, into history (outward) and myth (inward), while retaining the texture of experience. Here are “transparencies before candles in a darkened room,” a negotiation of light and darkness at the very axis of consciousness. The Biblical story of Lot’s wife shows how emotionally fatal it is to gaze back at one’s disasters. The doors ahead are all open, if we will only take the courage to pass through them, charged not with regret but desire.
--Paul Hoover
Bowery Poetry Club. March 6, 7pm. In celebration of Small Press Month: Lila Zemborain and Martine Bellen (Belladonna Books), Eileen Myles (Wave Books), Lynne Tillman (Soft Skull), Jen Benka (Soft Skull), Brenda Coultas (Coffee House Press), Ted Mathys (Coffee House Press), Alex Rose (Akashic Books), Camelia Entekhabifard (Seven Stories Press), Hattie Gossett (Seven Stories Press), Camilla Trinchieri (Soho Press), Anne Landsman (Soho Press), Corrine Fitzpatrick (Sona Books), Paul Mills (Bowery Books), and others!
The Old Man of the Sea, Sigmund Freud, stood before
Me. He stands before me now, seventy-two years later,
A little-lion-like creature paddles in my direction.
Everyone carries an animal in them.
War is not over.
Our deep place where we hate—where Thoth and Apollo Reside, riding a gap-toothed goat.
Last night Freud heard the familiar siren-shrieks.
Then the soul-shattering “all clear.”
Danger is out there—the Professor’s eternal Preoccupation, occupation.
Nemean lion clearing birds from the mind’s rafters, Fate. Planting his steadfast foot in the stream
Of consciousness. Each line in a poem can’t avoid Acting as a series of questions that stands
Half-hidden in the river reeds watching over
A life that’s being born. This is life—see!
His is a frail bridge, strong enough for the Gods
Who weigh little. His is a bridge only few can cross. The building construction of phantasms across
The bridge are lines of poetry. We reach deep
Inside ourselves and become Gods, light enough
To pass, to cross the rickety bridge
Over to a housing project Made of poems. --Mid-income.
He is comfortable leaving this set of phenomena
Guardian of all beginnings.
***
Photograph: Alexey Titarenko, Untitled (Dresses), 1998, Courtesy of Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York.
