A Sharp Double-Edged
Luxury Object
Rodia Draghincescu
Translated by Adam J. Sorkin & Antuza Genescu
Cervena Barva Press
ISBN 978-0-9910091-2-1
$17.00
A Sharp Double-Edged Luxury Object, poems will enchant and
intrigue the reader. Very few books use
language in the way Draghincescu does. Most experimental or contemporary poetry
seems to me self-conscious. Reading Draghincescu's poetry is like slipping into
warm water:
“my loveliness flung her panties in the street
we made a decision to wear everything in the open
(the history of this movement and its glory can be toasted
at its memorial between the first bench in the military park
and the first bench in the tribunal
a clothesline with panties in royal black)”
The first poem, Sight Doesn't Take Everything In, the reader
will take a step back and adjust their
perception. The poem's 3 D vision requires consideration and a
willingness to be in the poem. At once, the sentence’s tense is part of the
present and the past at the same time. It also flings immediacy into another
person and syntax. Another reason to read Draghincescu's poems with an open
unfettered view is to see what a poem can be and become. We find sense in
certain words that help to fuse the poem into its meaning and there are many
meanings in the poems' relationship with words. Word like 'military park' and
'tribunal.' Are we about to be invited
to a tribunal of sorts. The end of a relationship --that may or may not
encompass everything? It will take much thought to connect the intention:
“I'll exhaust myself saying aaaaaaaaaaaaah into the gizmo
innermost essentials will prick my skin up to
and over my head among white scarves / veils
my scream thanks to which the most abstract of experiences
gets hypostatized in war rivers
will come into intimate contact with the image
of water within”
And I love the word
gizmo. Like the word contraption it confers and shutters with resentments. The
poet continues using fragments, Dada deconstruction, or the ordinary as poetry,
done in an extraordinary manner; the Surreal clips cut into the poem and form
visions, collages, broken watches. The poem ticks. We get to envision how the
poem rounds itself, winding timelessly:
“so confusingly concrete I’ll be swimming in myself
anyhow the silence outside has abandoned this place
when I write the word loneliness I write participation
in an inward fanfare of birds
in demonstrations of laid-off virginity
short words muscular pathways still remain
gray hair too (a tendency towards intellectualization
makes itself known in the synapse / thigh in debate versus
buttocks)
miss photo so tall so special rendered real as much by
affections
as by intelligent ideas”
Disjunction works extremely well in the poem, yet, it flows
into the next phrase with the ease of polished slashes and phrases. Rodica uses
contemporary images, contemporary language with great skill and confidence. I
don't get the sense that Rodica is different in her use of language. I get the
sense that she is comfortable using all the nuances of modern poetry and how
modern poetry can be made to sound like great poetry. Rodica is not afraid of
words and using tense and words in her own tongue:
“where it rains best
color with fuji
so much imaginary plasma so much conscious flesh
felling the fact that it's a wrongly perceived concept
miss process with her navel thinking of an everyday brain
without the supernumeraries of mental principles
anyhow my loneliness can be said to be poetry
and poetry wears no panties”
It would be a mistake on the readers’ part to think this
poem more than it is. In fact it is what it is in so many ways we get to read
about anger, love, intelligent musing about our world and its trappings, its
politics, its religions. I find it all there and the poet herself appears ready
for the next poem, always ready to write and write she does with the brilliance
of any writer I’ve ever read. Bravo:
“but deep psychic phenomena instead
where the world parades with a bare bottom
and it won't depend on sight because sight doesn't take
everything in
in the final analysis I’m not even lonely
as I lie here under the nightlight”
This is indeed a, “luxury object,” a must buy. Writing at
its best is not self-conscious. A poem need not contain the world but I think
it speaks to everyone in a language the poets deems understandable. The
contemporary reader will adore this universal book.
Irene Koronas
Poetry Editor: Wilderness House Literary Review
Reviewer: Cervena Barva Press
