BY TIFFANY SCIACCA
Don’t you hate those articles with headlines like 20 Movies You Probably Never Heard of but Should Watch Now! And then you click through the exhaustive list, pop ups and all only to discover that you have seen 18 of them? I do. Now don’t get me wrong, I am always, always grateful for discovery. I have added quite a few books, records and films to my household I would have never heard of if it were not for these types of articles. I just do not like the assumption that I am completely clueless, so I am going to write about poets that I have never heard of and share them with you. And if it is someone you have heard of, you will either click elsewhere or keep reading just in case there is that one tiny factoid unknown to you. Most are poets I have come across by way of old anthologies (I have quite a few) and a few are just from me searching on my own terms via Google and research. If I continue this series it will be entitled Another Poet I’ve Never Heard Of!
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Lola Ridge by Marjorie Content
The first is Lola Ridge, an American poet born in Dublin in 1873. She was part of the Greenwich Village movement along with Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, and Hart Crane. Ridge was a supporter of the working class, working with Emma Goldman and protesting in support of freeing Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927. As a poet she gained attention with the publication of her book,The Ghetto and Other Poems, which highlighted the plight of both Jewish and other immigrants on the Lower East Side of New York. This work was considered rough, but powerful (I’d take those as compliments). She was very committed in her beliefs, leading a life of poverty even though she didn’t have to.
Here are a few pieces that stuck out for me.
Chicago
Your faith is in what you hold,
Monster, with your back against the lakes.
You gather the cities close, with iron reins
Knotted in your frozen grip.
But your sleepily savage eyes, like a white bull’s,
Turn neither to the East nor West.
Sometimes a sickness takes you—
Convulsive movements pass along your length. . . .
I think there is a giant child that kicks in you,
Where your blood is running like a river under its ice.
A Memory
I remember
The crackle of the palm trees
Over the mooned white roofs of the town…
The shining town…
And the tender fumbling of the surf
On the sulphur-yellow beaches
As we sat…a little apart…in the close-pressing night.
The moon hung above us like a golden mango,
And the moist air clung to our faces,
Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a child
And we watched the out-flung sea
Rolling to the purple edge of the world,
Yet ever back upon itself…
As we…
Inadequate night…
And mooned white memory
Of a tropic sea…
How softly it comes up
Like an ungathered lily.
Débris
I love those spirits
That men stand off and point at,
Or shudder and hood up their souls—
Those ruined ones,
Where Liberty has lodged an hour
And passed like flame,
Bursting asunder the too small house.
Mother
Your love was like moonlight
turning harsh things to beauty,
so that little wry souls
reflecting each other obliquely
as in cracked mirrors…
beheld in your luminous spirit
their own reflection,
transfigured as in a shining stream,
and loved you for what they are not.
You are less an image in my mind
than a luster
I see you in gleams
pale as star-light on a gray wall…
evanescent as the reflection of a white swan
shimmering in broken water.
Potpourri
Do you remember
Honey-melon moon
Dripping thick sweet light
Where Canal Street saunters off by herself among quiet trees?
And the faint decayed patchouli—
Fragrance of New Orleans
Like a dead tube rose
Upheld in the warm air…
Miraculously whole.
Dreams
Men die…
Dreams only change their houses.
They cannot be lined up against a wall
And quietly buried under ground,
And no more heard of…
However deep the pit and heaped the clay –
Like seedlings of old time
Hooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world –
Dreams will to light.
These pieces are definitely lined with similes, The moon hung above us like a golden mango. At first, I was like, "Mango?" but then, "why not mango?" I have seen that moon here in Sicily, rising full, so full and orange, deep orange over the dark water and gaped at it as if it were something more than a moon, so why not?
I also love the way Ridge uses the power of detail in every piece, a device I employ quite a bit, maybe to a fault in places. In the second line of Chicago, she writes, Monster, with your back against the lakes. I could see it? Could you? Granted, I have spent most of my adult life in Chicago and have seen that backside on more than one occasion. I loved that line and it made the poem for me.
In Mother, a piece I chose simply for the title for as a woman with a thorny relationship with my mother, I am instantly attracted to poems that may touch on the subject and though I cannot relate to the tone, I appreciate the voice. The first stanza is full, love like moonlight turning harsh things to beauty. But the second stanza is lean and the one I admire,
You are less an image in my mind
than a luster
I see you in gleams
probably because it is closer to my feelings about my mother. Don’t you just love the magic of a poem’s accuracy? It is all about finding the right voice sometimes reading extensively about a poet to find the one that is right for you but never limit yourself, you cannot have a chorus with just one voice.
Poems above and others can be found at University of Pennsylvania, Poets.org, poetry nook and University of Illinois.
Tiffany Sciacca is a writer who has recently moved to Sicily from the Midwest. Her work has appeared in the Silver Birch Press, SOFTBLOW and DNA Magazine UK. When she is not learning a new language or trying to blend in, she is reading horror anthologies, binging on Nordic Noir or plugging away at her first Giallo screenplay. @EustaceChisholm