Tinted Steam
by Constance Stadler
Shadow Archer Press
This chapbook marks the return of Constance Stadler to the poetry world after a lengthy absence in academia. It makes a very impressive and linguistically gifted return to the poetry world.
In the laughing house
strewn in the plum dappled
peach trickling meadow,
From “Welsh-flecked Romance,” which is a perfect poem showing a Dylan Thomas style facility for adjectival use, and a true feeling for the beauty and placeability, the portability, of words that is the mark of an authentic poet.
“Isfahan” shows a knowledge of and sensitivity to Muslim history and culture that is unusual in a country which has a very dismal recent history of oppressing Islam. It lingers around the precincts of the name, “Isfahan” is one of many possible transliterations. It even quotes young Coleridge.
The atmosphere is captured in lines like
A solitary oud
plucked by
still warm
ornamented fingers
still warm
sings a sad
uncertain song
to the scarlet dying sun.
(The Last Arabian Night)
The atmosphere in this and some other poems is Oriental, but not one of Orientalism, the poem tastes genuine, the attributes are not just dragged in for effect.
Other poems are genuine and immediate in their emotional impact
I cannot reach up your legs
and pull out the death in you
and I cannot
hug it away.
(Impotence)
There is a whole deal of linguistic precision here, very fetching lines like
I believe in the sky
Elongated rectangles
In mottled, motley hues.
And trapezoids of geese
Protracting necks to
Cry their course
Of Pythagorean perfection.
(World Geometry)
On the whole this chapbook represents a stunning run that takes us from Romanticism and the East to modernism and the postmodernism that (if we are to believe Lyotard) both precedes and succeeds modernism). Since Connie is now definitively back, i hope this is the race, because if it’s just warming up then we’re all totally outclassed when she starts running for real.
Reviewed by David McLean.
Available from Shadow Archer Press.
$6.95 U.S.; $9.95 International
Brilliant review for a brilliant book.