Incarnadine by Mary Szybist

Abstract

reviews term, not because the author wanted to explore his subject matter in a variety of genres but because he has expertise in a number of fields, and that expertise very naturally rose to the surface here. Dealing with loss is very much about memory. The Day of Shelly’s Death remembers. And it re-members , that is, it reconnects the pieces of broken, fragmented experience. In “The Ifugao Men,” we read about the moment Rosaldo is brought to where his dead wife’s body was found: “Conchita arrives // with a pale, trembling man. / He places his lips on the body’s lips, // rocks back. A fly buzzes / in then out of the body’s mouth.” This is but a taste of what is found here. In the first of the book’s two essays, “Notes on Poetry and Ethnography ,” he writes of his conviction that “The material of poetry is not so much the raw event as the traces it leaves” and “The ambition of poetry is . . . to be the event itself.” I heartily agree. And I believe Renato Rosaldo has achieved these aims magnificently. Margaret Randall Albuquerque, New Mexico Mary Szybist. Incarnadine. Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf Press. 2013. isbn 9781555976354 What happens when the nonhuman confronts the human? Mary Szybist explores the possibilities by making the Annunciation scene between Mary and the angel Gabriel the central encounter that is replayed in many different forms and modernized in a number of different contexts in her delicate, haunting collection . Szybist’s style is unusual in its imaginative force she invigorates the genre of devotional poetry with an uncommonly light yet vibrant touch. Conflating the mythic and the ordinary , the carnal and the sacred, her poems consider the range of ways in which annunciative confrontations that transform the spirit and heal the soul might occur in modern life. Like Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan,” Szybist’s work portrays the kaleidoscopically shifting sense of violence, terror, eros, and confusion inherent in an encounter between the human and the divine. She attempts nothing less than the realistic portrayal of an experience that cannot be logically understood by the human mind. The vantage points and images through which the Annunciation is reimagined are strikingly diverse. In “Long after the Desert and Donkey,” Gabriel addresses Mary as if he were her vigilant shadow: “What a thing to be with you and have / no words 70 worldliteraturetoday.org Federica de Paolis The Listener Samuel Rizzardi & Simona Rizzardi, tr. Troubador In her recent novel, Federica de Paolis uses the narrative device of listening in on telephone conversations to show how an act as simple as eavesdropping can vastly affect a person’s life. Dealing with themes of boredom, resentment, curiosity, connections between people, and listening, this book possesses a stark realism that draws the reader into its world. Tõnu Õnnepalu Radio Adam Cullen, tr. Dalkey Archive Press Tõnu Õnnepalu’s dense novel explores the dichotomy of a man who has been away for a long time returning home and his doubts about where he belongs. Frequently discussing Estonian culture and landscape and comparing the Baltic nation to France, the book demonstrates a complex understanding of the human psyche. Nota Bene for it. What a thing / to be outcast like that.” Their confrontation is reenacted as a televised moment in “Annunciation Overheard from the Kitchen”: “There were faint sounds / like walnuts being dropped by crows into the street.” Yet another version evokes the central scene through the startling grid of gulls attacking a whale: “why wouldn’t such sweetness be for them? / For they outnumber her.” Another poem disarmingly conjures their meeting through the images of a rare flower, Kinkaid’s lupine, and the endangered species of blue butterfly that is irresistibly drawn to it: “If I could bind myself to this moment, to the slow / snare of its scent, / What would it matter if I became / just the flutter of page / in a text someone turns.” What these poems share including those that do not specifically focus on the Annunciation is a kind of blueprint in verse of the erotically variegated state of spiritual longing . This complex state of desire is conveyed cinematically in actions...