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Rated: E · Book · Writing · #2044345
Writing about what I have been reading and encountering in the media.
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July 19, 2022 at 2:11pm
July 19, 2022 at 2:11pm
#1035434
Guerin, Paulette, Wadding through Lethe, Futurecycle Press, Athens, GA, 2022.

Before opening this lovely volume of lyric poetry, I asked why the title was chosen and what it said about the content. After all, one is supposed to drink the waters of the Lethe, not wade in them.

The first poem is about holding on vs. letting go. As I read, I came to see a line, like a horizon, or the bank of a river, that one might cross, or having crossed already, one carries memories to the other side. There may be "desires concealed like tree rings," "a burst of yellow," or "her smell. I had already learned to let go, not expecting the grip of bergamot, of cloves." They may return "like a forgotten letter in her own handwriting or a snapshot of herself she can't remember being taken." The memories may appear annually as ghosts connected only to the past, with no present and unwilling to consider the future as in the poem, "Visit."

If you consider memories, in the way Paulette Guerin does in this slim volume while facing the river Lethe, perhaps you, too, will choose to wade rather than drink, at least for now.


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