Luna-Verse: Love Poems

Maggie Helwig was a freelance writer and Professor of Pre-Industrial Arts, UPRPU, Peterborough, Ontario.

Luna-Verse, Catherine Ahearn’s fifth book of poetry, is a series of sixty poems exploring something which the author refers to as “Trans-lust,” an “ancestral union” making its practitioners into “superbeings.” This Trans-lust allegedly has something to do with a loving relationship between two persons — we are referred to Petrarch and Laura, Dante and Beatrice — but there is precious little of this to be found in these poems. True, there are two rather wraith-like beings named Gerard and Marie who occasionally put in an appearance amidst the cloyingly lush imagery and the irritating neologisms, but that two such unsubstantial creatures are capable of any mutual love is hard to believe. One has, instead, the impression that Ahearn is making love to her own thoughts about love — Luna-Verse is powerfully heavy with the smell of narcissus.