Minotaurs and Other Alphabets

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.

Nicole Markotic dedicates this volume to her friend and colleague, Fred
Wah, with the note that he “understands that the prose poem is a
mythical beast.” She then proceeds to demonstrate that the
“minotaur” for her is locked in a labyrinth of syntax and
dislocations—a situation that remains true and distressing through all
six sections of this volume.

Markotic admits to “verbal gyrations” and to the fact that she and
others “no longer believe in that charmed syntax” and have “vowed
to distort.” This destruction of most of what a writer holds dear,
together with an insistence on lowercase letters, titles such as “-ily
ever after,” and parentheses in abundance (e.g., “I could tell [he]
that I’ve learned to love less [no: more] ... takes the daemons,
immortal hands and all [no: less]”), makes for confusing reading.

Many poems parallel stream-of-consciousness meanderings: “you, an
hour ago and ten minutes from the ocean. my sister doesn’t want her
doctor to induce labour /one time I figured out I was having a migraine
and no headache: a body still in the midst of shutdown.” In fact,
migraines seem to be a unifying image in the poems In “inseyed,” the
poet suggests that “tonight, the migraine is about light.” In “You
tell me you believe in magic and at first I’m with you,” she notes
that “the hurting [has] its own artistic value. A migraine explodes
your pupils when the light are out.” For Markotic, a migraine is
“cerebral menstruation”—accounting, no doubt, for the destruction
of this poet’s left-brain activity.

Occasionally a incredible phrase or image surfaces (“your / body
wrapped around the sound of murmur” or “Suzette / decorates my
shoulders with a pulse of daffodils, the footsteps of ladyslippers”),
demonstrating a possibility of metaphor and an originality that could be
further explored.

Markotic is reviewing her own work, albeit ironically, when she
confesses that “there is no such thing as a prose poem. This has been
proven / the problem with myths is not believing their syntax. / who
knows the correct grammar for a point of transition?”