Like a Beast of Colours, Like a Woman

Beryl Baigent is a poet; her published collections include Absorbing the
Dark, Hiraeth: In Search of Celtic Origins, Triptych: Virgins, Victims,
Votives, and Mystic Animals.

Sophia Kaszuba, a librarian at the University of Toronto, dedicates her
book to “my beloved Robert W. Reid, 19 May 1937–15 June 1997. The
clue to exploring Kaszuba’s work is given in the opening epigram:
“In the throat is/a blue door into/a room of ghosts.” Blue is
associated with the throat chakra in Hindu mysticism and is the
alchemical mixing bowl in which the four elements are formed. This
psychic centre challenges one to purify both the content and purpose of
one’s words. Accordingly, Kaszuba’s words are deceptively simple,
yet filled with sound and chant. A chorus of frogs serenades: “about
the rain, / about wetness and bogs and everything that flowed,” and a
hummingbird “gives a short high cry … wings loud as the sound of the
mind.”

Sense of sound emanates from this chakra. The voice can take on the
qualities of any of the four elements. Sometimes Kaszuba expresses
herself in a ripe, sexual voice originating from the water level. When
the heart/air voice is strongest, her words are gentle and sympathetic
and she speaks in the eternal now. Even in poems that record times of
sleeping, all verbs are present tense. “When you come here in sleep /
you know immediately where you are,” she tells her readers.

The throat chakra is the gateway of liberation through which “a small
yellow shoot / is growing, /with its closed purple / flower pointing to
the sun.” But lower elements are not neglected. Summers “red / like
ribbon candy” correspond with earth. “An orange umbrella for rain”
recalls the water element, while “weeping willows trailing humidity /
in the dusky green mists” suggest the air element.

Kaszuba springs from Russian roots and was raised in Northern Ontario.
Her poems are comfortably grounded in mining tunnels, scrub birch, and
granite landscape. Kaszuba has fully opened her Visshudha chakra to
release creativity, communication, and self-expression in her first book
of poetry. I hope she will continue to write from her higher centres
while listening with her inner ear to reveal the mysteries of life to
her readers.