A book review of:
The Antigone Poems
by Marie Slaight
Drawings by Terrence Tasker
2013, Altaire Production and Publishing
Potts Point, Australia
December 4, 2013
Poets do not know this terrain. Yet they may meditate on its being, one that is multiplied by galaxies yet named. And here she claims a sun, it is hers. A sun giving strength and light and one to energize the daemon – the lust in her, in him, in being used and using. She and he had it in a way, they were gods of being with experiences that defined depth and height and horizons that cannot be other than what they are. And then we witness a woman encased in myth and having lived in the mythical reality of surrender and loss, trying to describe in words that which has always eluded language and will continue to do so. The death masks see what we do. This is the realm of, the caldron of being that takes all in its spheres – bodies, emotions, strengths, polarities, extreme pain and pleasure mixed and shows how they may be one at times and respective of duality at other times. Loss and aloneness, seeking, mourning the being that is transcendent – mocking everyday life in its wake – torrential as a fierce hurricane with no direction – chaos unleashed in full view – and what do humans do with this? Witness. There is nothing to learn, to teach. It is and it allows what it does. Here, this being is seen and experienced in total freedom, not under the rule of a king, nor a prince nor a law in a province. There is no country, nor city, nor landscape. All the physicalness – wind, air, water, fire, cold, heat – is used just now, just a felt world that existed and left a world with chasms of space in its wake and the wake leaves little to deal with – nothing to look at or sense. Screams, blood, silence, ultimately loss of the greatness of being. Left a few words, she lives on such and such street, have some children. What.r.l. wallace
greenbank, wa, usa
West Pacific Review 