The Labyrinth of the Spirits

Abstract

Books in Review wraps it in caribou hide, and carries it into the future. The poems are written primarily in the vatic mode: “We will gather / the invisible wealth / lost between the cities / will chain up the monsters of history.” Many poems are incantatory as well—ritual medicine in their presentation and intent, often signaled by the use of anaphora : “spell me the name of my land / spell me the name of my mother / my eyelids have been closed / for too many centuries . . .” However, the most compelling poetic strategy in the collection is Fontaine’s use of the erotic as a community-enacting force of political engagement, as Adrienne Rich described it: “Poetry can break open locked chambers of possibility, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire” (What Is Found There). Threaded through the collection, the “I” (which is land/people/ flora/fauna/speaker) figures the presentand -future strength of the poet’s tribal community in terms of women’s sexuality, sensuality, and regenerative force. As Rich would have it, the poems are both political and personal; they reveal “how we are— inwardly as well as outwardly—under conditions of great imbalance and abuse of material power” (What Is Found There). Moreover, “the people” in these poems are not only the poet’s Innu people but also indigenous peoples around the world whose lives have been diminished by colonization. Because the erotic is an integral part of the collection, it’s difficult to pull quotes, so perhaps it’s best to let the poet speak from the prologue: “The world waits for woman to come back as she was born: woman standing, woman powerful, woman resurgent . A call rises in me and I’ve decided to say yes to my birth.” Fontaine’s Blueberries and Apricots is a resounding “Yes” to the universe and a rebuke to those who would dismiss both poetry and the lives of indigenous peoples. Jeanetta Calhoun Mish Oklahoma City University Tanja Maljartschuk A Biography of a Chance Miracle Trans. Zenia Tompkins. Belgrade, Serbia. Cadmus Press. 2018. 246 pages. Tanja Maljartschuk’s A Biography of a Chance Miracle is a deceptively complex take on post-Soviet Ukrainian culture. Maljartschuk , known in Ukraine for her fairytale -like allegories, employs simplistic language and a juvenile narrator to conceal a multilayered critique of the wild consumerism , blind obedience to dogma, and lack of faith in structures of authority that filled the vacuum left by the receding welfare state in the 1990s. ThecasualnesswithwhichMaljartschuk’s protagonist, Lena, discusses brutality and violence makes her world seem all the more brutal and violent. This is a society in which grandsons beat their grandmothers, husbands rape their child wives, anarchists ravage bookstores, and few people think twice. But perhaps this is because these people are simply hard to surprise: there’s a sort of magical-realist quality to their daily lives that presumably results from the absurdity of living under totalitarianism. To the extent that Maljartschuk is making a point—and she is—she seems to be reminding us that multiple layers of oppression can exist at once and that victims can also be executioners. Certainly, there is a hierarchy of needs, but the “smallest” ones are often a litmus test of society’s true values . Violence seeps down to the humblest levels, often manifesting in bizarre ways (a dognapping ring, for example). Recognizing this as an injustice does not invalidate the “larger” injustices occurring within the system. Rather, it brings violence in all its multiplicity to the fore. Unfortunately for us, there is a particularly Ukrainian wryness in Maljartschuk’s prose that is funnier in the original than it is in English. This is less a matter of linguistic than cultural translation. Biography operates on a number of levels in the original; taking it out of its native context diminishes its power, but only slightly. It remains a story of an unlikely hero taking on unlikely causes and, ultimately, offers the reader a darkly humorous take on life and hope in a failing state. Ali Kinsella Chicago Carlos Ruiz Zafón The Labyrinth of the Spirits Trans. Lucia Graves. New York. Harper. 2018. 805 pages. The Labyrinth of the Spirits is the fourth...