That Those Lips Had Language

admin — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 21:02:00 +0000

Filled with surprising turns and bursts of imagery and imagination, That Those Lips had Language is an ambitious book of poetry. Blonstein seems awed by language itself, and she pushes its limits to upset readers’ expectations. Placing titles at the ends of poems, employing unorthodox punctuation and obscure vocabulary, and using primarily lowercase letters indicate that the author is challenging readers to approach these poems with a non-traditional point of view, to allow themselves to have a unique, perhaps transformative, experience.

A concern with the female body and its experiences is pervasive and compelling here, as well as a constant turning from abstraction to concrete imagery and back, as if Blonstein searches for a way to express those experiences, but realizes the impossiblity of such a task. Turning to puns and rhyme for inspiration, she writes of a “waisted world of light” where ghosts’ “desire is entropy renaunting/ space (boundary of violets instead of a face).” Her pairings of abstract and concrete imagery are often stunning: “will: a chandelier of orange music,” and “the high sea sounds like/ a ruffled blue in exile.” Thankfully, no matter how far Blonstein ventures into the conceptual, each poem provides a grounding moment of the tangible. She knows these moments are necessary to dispell a reader’s anxiety of the unknown and keep her reading.

Blonstein’s perspective is unquestionably feminist here; though the poems touch on overt politics only a few times, one understands that every unorthodox use of grammar and image asks us to rethink our comfortable and cliché’d schemas. The book combines this questioning of the dominant paradigm, characteristic of “language poets,” with a desire to create a real, sensual world for the reader. Perhaps Blonstein describes her goal with these lines from “babelique”: “she regenerates words to verify the world/ because what has always been forgotten/ is like arms starfish sacrifice to survive.”

Written by: Sarah Hudgens, April 7th 2007

Crazy Mary and Others

admin — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 03:45:00 +0000

By Michele Belluomini

Plan B Press

Crazy Mary and Others is an emotion-evoking look into the life of a woman who has been destined by humanity to be the outsider. She walks in a world where simple communication to others is an effort too great to comply with. Mary, having been released from an institution (that the author keeps obscure) returns to a life unclaimed and she feels unlived. She returns back to the streets of Manhattan only to find that life, as she knew it, is gone.

Michele Belluomini has tapped into the emotions and intelligence of a woman who, if we were to see Mary on the street, would be just another indigent “crazy” shuffling their way through a bustling city of indifference. As the story progresses, you experience the shock and sudden despair of Mary as she tries desperately to justify her existence among a world of people that are now gone and her home of yesteryear where the flowers no longer bloom. Belluomini works with emotional placement to bind those things both past and present and looks at the symbolism of the earth, stars, moon and life sources. She intricately weaves this journey with an overwhelming sense of the positive. The readers find themselves overwhelmed with the plight of Mary, and with a sense of hopefulness, they dream that this insightful, intelligent woman is able to once again, find her place in this world gone awry.

At the beginning of this wonderful piece of art, Belluomini states a stanza so powerful that it bears repeating for this review. As a writer, I find so many things to quote in this work, that it has been a sincere struggle to only pick out only one for the limited space I have. The title poem, “Crazy Mary,” states:

“still not sure how she got to this cold eastern city still not sure what the terms of exile are she says: I can remember the past, but I cannot recall the future she says: no, that is not what I wanted to say I wanted to say, the future behind me is the past in front of me Yes, That is what I wanted to say”

Those few opening lines begin the journey of internal struggle for our heroine Mary and her final plan to make sense of her world and ours. Belluomini will change your mind and heart about our “crazy” homeless. She will reach into your soul and command your attention to the fact these “crazies” are people too and are deserving of our love, our attention and our respect. Many lives are lived in many different ways, one no more respective than the next. Crazy Mary and Others also offers some other works from Belluomini that will also stir your soul, open your eyes and make your heart, a better place to dwell within.

Written by: Karen S. Morris, March 27th 2007