She started her poetry blog just after she gave up her career
as a bartender and decided to become a writer instead, complementing this with
free on-line reviews for a New York publication.
An early admirer of Walt Whitman, she sought to leave her
own mark – which included serious praise for her poetry at a prestigious
college.
I showed her work to an English professor who said, “at first
glance, I was in awe of her word play, and then I saw it is completely all in
her mind and projecting her reality onto you. (meaning the reader.)”
It is brilliant and yet so intensely personal, it is difficult
to escape the webs she weaves, once entranced, you get trapped in her logic,
dazzled by her word play, and completely helpless to argue any other reality –
since none can exist in her self-created world.
There is a duality to her poetry and music, surface brilliance
with a stream emotional turmoil stirring underneath, brilliant yet disturbing.
According to her biography, she showed brilliance at age 3
when she could create “complete art” at a time when other kids her age were
still finger painting. She could read fluently by age 5 foreshadowing a future
of possible greatness, even my professor friend acknowledged when remarking on
her deft handling of language – though for the most part she tends to use her
poetry to cope with her troubled life – less dramatic than some of what she
told our boss – such as when she claimed her father had died when she was young
when he clearly had not.
Her music is less self-serving, though her ability to put together
complex harmonies when very young set her on a path she apparently hoped would
lead her to fame and fortune, when poetry rarely does.
Indeed, her musical career seemed to be the stuff of a
Hollywood movie when at age 12 when she got up on a box in the hall of her
school and began to sing, her voice so impressive everybody stopped to listen
and applaud. She got involved in high school theater as well, even one professional
role in 1995, before going off to sign as a prestigious club in Harlem and went
on to win a number of competitions prior to her going on to attend prestigious art
schools.
This led her to recordings and a five-year tour with a polka
band, and some measure of success, not to mention marriage, after which
everything fell apart, and she began shifting career choices, although the one consistent
element was her poetry, with what she posted in 2012 only the tip of an iceburg.
She had had other websites filled with poetry dating back to at least 2003,
when her life had taken a different turn in what she called “a change of priorities,”
and seemed to reflect a decision she came to while on the high seas with her
husband and the band.
The poem’s open with a very senual image of “poised lips” that dangle
like fruit, delcate and red” and goes on to the concept of being in with the in
crowd,” if one knows the right code, and being part of the privileged class she
generally despised, part of that class that got through all barriers other
people had to struggle to get through. On this tour, she appears to have met an
old woman, “a strange little thing, which liked to gorge herself on brothers
and sisters, taught you about it.”
The poem suggests that she knew from early on what it took
to get ahead in the world and found no objections to it (indifferent is the
word she used), wearing through a planner “way full of more than laundry lists”
and what to do, “figures of destiny” but ultimately, her poem suggests, a trap.
Maybe she was right.
No comments:
Post a Comment