By Lynette G. Esposito
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Event Horizon by Cate Marvin, published by Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, Washington, May 2022) is ninety pages of long, sometimes prose-like poems that deal with universal subjects such as relationships, memories and life problems.
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Rendezvous with Ghost on page eleven explores the possible sensual relationship with a ghost in an historic hotel filled with memories.
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Did it transpire to rise from beneath the floorboards?
Did it escape into the room through a heating vent?
Suddenly, my head palpable as an apple, felt its eyes.
The folding chairs woven into the room by their rows.
The shining caps of knees bent that belong to bodies
that sat with ears attentive as rabbits struck midfield
by a passing motor…
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The eerie scene is set. The poem consists of twenty-six lines in a one-stanza form presented visibly like a newspaper column. The narrator’s voice erupts in the last line in italics: But I love him, I love him, I love him. All is made clear in this imaginative love story.
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Marvin’s poem Blue on pages forty-seven and forty-eight is dedicated to Adam Zagajewski (1945–2021)
and explores grief with the memory of shared observances in nature.
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I really like that joe-eyed weed.
Pictures of pretty pink wildflowers
can hinder sorrow for a second,
by the idea of filling my yard with
the distraction of blossoms whose
colors turn on like a hundred radio
stations all at once. The problem
with plants for me is all the names I can’t remember….
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Marvin skillfully equates flowers, colors and one’s own yard to the alleviation of grief which she gives a time frame to—a second. The reader can feel the loss through the carefully selected images of things a person wish they did, the lack of remembering things, and the wondering about where one was when death came for the loved one. All work extremely well partly because they are common to all of us.
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The poem has six stanzas all composed of nine lines. This reminds me of Sylvia Plath who often used form to suggest a message. I particularly like this.
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In the poem, My Mother Hangs Up, on pages eighty-four, eighty-five and eighty-six, is presented
in couplets mimicking the back- and -forth conversation between a daughter and a mother on the phone and the masks a daughter wears for her mother’s sake.
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I can feel my mind panting.
She asks me to save the program.
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I almost convinced her to fly
to New York to see the performance
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with me but her knee is stiff
and she can’t manage stairs.
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The daughter persuades, the mother resists. The poem continues in this venue. Marvin sets up scenarios of her past, her mother’s reactions and the ultimate concern that her mother thinks she knows her. It is a fine example of two people in a complicated relationship, a mother and a daughter,
who understand each other but not in the way they think they do. Mother love does that. Daughter love does that, and Marvin hits the target on this.
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You can find the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Event-Horizon-Cate-Marvin/dp/155659643X
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Lynette G. Esposito has been an Adjunct Professor at Rowan University, Burlington County and Camden County Colleges. She has taught creative writing and conducted workshops in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Mrs. Esposito holds a BA in English from the University of Illinois and an MA in Creative Writing and English Literature from Rutgers University.
North of Oxford 