Sybaritic Press
reviewed by David McLean

This new book from Lummox Press is a collection of poems written by Marie Lecrivain between the years 2002 and 2008. It has a distinctive voice, her poetry, acerbic sometimes but more characteristically a dry and intellectual catalog of the worse things in life and a nuanced and grateful catalog of the better things in life. It is a voice that knows nostalgia and Sehnsucht, and also knows how to analyze the necessary distances between humans with a minimum of surplus phraseology

Stable again, I thank him.
He nods. We board the bus,
and avoid each other.
(15 Minutes of Fare p. 133)

Much of this poetry reflects on the verbal process (poems about poetry are usually pretty trivial, not so if, as here, they reflect the ontological constitution of humans personae through lexis

Translation

If I could lay between your feet,
while you whisper your name to me,
I still wouldn’t understand,
the language of trees--
gathered on the wind,
filtered down through leaves,
breathed into my ear.
Beautiful;
still beyond anything in me,
but the love of sounds.
(p. 77)

There is no language of trees obviously, they do not need one, but the Tao wherefrom they say has no language either, listening to the language of the trees would here be doing the useless, listening to the silent uncarved block which does nothing and nevertheless is the source of everything. In this sense poetry, which shows new ways to see things, would be the utility of the useless. I suppose to understand it would be to accept, and identify with, life and the universe, to know that we are not more than the trees.

As always to follow the Tao is to follow the example the trees and not do the superfluous, don't paint legs on snakes. Marie manages very proficiently to avoid her poems becoming too prissy and overly poetic even when she handles images like “wing and lyre” - other people, generally speaking, cannot do this. In fact, if a poet uses the lyre or muse metaphor without sarcasm, I would usually say “shoot 'em.” But she does it and properly, a gift seldom seen nowadays.

Lecrivain writes

My children emerge
from the birth canal with
twisted limbs
scabrous flesh
laser beam eyes
Bukowski noses
& Trakl tongues
(A Poem Only A Mother Could Love p. 168)

after regretting that she could not emulate Rilke and others. This is our gain, of course, Bukowski and Trakl are so much better than Rilke's self-righteous pseudo-philosophic wittering, and Trakl comes much closer to the truth of Being, says Heidegger, who must have known, having invented it.

I like these poems, which means that they are good, since I feel no kinship with any of the religiosity that haunts them under the surface and many of the feelings expressed are alien to me, I do not know what regretting things is like, for example. This proves their worth as poems, they can make me understand what such feelings might be.