La parola da casa, Serena Piccoli

The Daily Glance

Ange Mlinko's Shoulder Season explores the difference in the mind's "little spa" (the created interior world of the imagination) and the destruction, both financial and physical, that surrounds us. Moreover, Mlinko is great at taking us in one direction and then shifting speeds so that it seems like we know what she is talking about in language that is familiar when we do not.

A single taste bud magnified resembles an orchid
but what that one's drinking from is a woman's eye

which must be brinelss. I wonder what she consumes
that her tears taste like fructose. For minutes she's all that its.

These lines use familiar language, and I think I can go somewhere with them, but then again, I'm not sure. Mlinko's turning of a simple phrase like "she's all that is" to "she's all that its" really complicates the interpretation process. Beyond the intimate level interpretative quandaries, I like that Mlinko's work reads like an active response to what is happening now.

In the weeks after the catastrophe
I reported to work only to brood at my cubicle
and feel the trembling of the river
like a Rubicon.

Typically, it might bother me that a poem like this one is not more specific. What catastrophe? What company? What river? But in this poem the abstraction seems appropriate because it is part of the cubicle culture. The "I" disappears into abstraction in the cubicle.

Before reading this book, I only knew Mlinko's work through her brilliant critical works, but now that I have read this one, I know that her poetry is just as good as her criticism. If you are interested in more about this book, you should head over to the interview with her here.