COLLECTIONS THAT RING TRUE reviewed by Mary Ellen Talley
Asheville Poetry Review; volume 29, no. 1, 2022, issue 31
As we enter the pages of Martina Reisz Newberry’s fifth collection, Glyphs, the poems weave their way seamlessly, without section breaks, as poems amplify and echo one another. Newberry leans toward free verse poems that sing via ekphrasis, urbanity, and waves of wind and water. She often employs syllabics, repetition, and changing lineation. A Californian by birth, her poems revel in the veritie of Los Angeles, demonstrating her devotion to the city that has long been her home.
Newberry’s cultural and landscape references often refer to LA whether she mentions the City of Angels, by name or not. The poem, “Green Things,” tells of Mexican gardeners coming “in their trucks” and how “the gauzy atmosphere will part for them.” The title, “Asphalt” speaks of suspicions, “I park those fears / in deserted parking lots.” Another poem, “Into the Skid,” packs a punch as it refers to loss of virginity, a breath mint paired with a condom, “leashed” passion, and someone who called it all an “orchestrated hoax.” One superbly visual poem, “Slouched Against a Stair Rail,” is a narrative that depicts a grimy man on Wilshire Boulevard thanking the poet for a cigarette in flawless French:
I offer him a pack of Ovals.
He smiles a one-toothy smile. Then look!
takes a cigarette holder from
his pocket and inserts my offering,
waits for my lighter. Now think on this:
a homeless dude holding that ciggie
aloft in a somewhat elegant
holder and waving me off. He said,
Merci pour la cigarette. Je vous
remercie de votre beauté et
de votre générosité.
With perfect timing, the poem on the next page in the collection, “Opus #22,” performs analytical surgery on modern malaise. “I have said before that we pray to a god / we do not love for / those we do love.”
Glyphs includes many ekphrastic poems about works of art. Two poems about love and landscape appear midway on facing pages. In “Toward the End,” which refers to an early photograph of a nude, the speaker states that behind her, “out the window, / the landscape rippled, melted into / itself.” However, “Bar Room Kiss” is a persona poem of interior landscape from the viewpoint of a woman at a bar depicted in a modern figurative painting. “You put your head down next to mine, met / my face and kissed me right there / at the table.”
Newberry’s poems continue to echo one another. The ending of “Bar room Kiss” resonates ten pages later in the poem, “Watching a Lone Priest On Live Camera [Empty] St. Raphael of Brooklyn Orthodox Church During the Corona Virus Quarantine.” Both poems similarly end with a “whisper” of “tomorrow,” one a question and the other declarative. From notes or the poems themselves, some of Newberry’s most beautiful poems weave ekphrasis with memoir.
After reading an ecstatic depiction of a concert, I, as reader, was eager to check it out on YouTube. Rereading the poem “Luciano Pavarotti Sings ‘Nessun Dorma'” while watching his performance made me feel the thrill that had arrested Newberry.
A mystery character, Sadie, recurs in some of Newberry’s poems. Could she be an invented muse or a composite LA resident? In “Sadie’s Dance,” the poet responds to Sadie’s query about a physician’s eye contact, with an observational simile, “We / reach out to each other then back away / like sheer curtains at an open window.”
Newberry also uses repetition of a motif or word to build structure of theme. Images of wind and water traverse pages of Glyphs, making the progression through the collection more wavelike than linear. For example, in “We’re Not Going To Talk About The Wind:”
My father said the wind was just a
noisy reminder that we are all
leaving this life the same way we came
into it: . . . full of sound and fury,
signifying . . . Hell! You know the rest.
The point is not to be afraid.
The first poem of the collection, “Chorus,” anticipates a gutsy honesty as it begins, “My new cocktail of choice is Anisette and Anxiety” and includes, “I am bent by all my steam-rolled sins’ / a flattened shadow, a cocker spaniel rather than / the smart, sleek Doberman I’ve always wanted to be.” In a beautiful circularity, the final poem, “Gibbous Moon,” includes the word anxiety:
The places in my soul where I kept secrets
are taken up with anxiety in regards
to my own mortality. The dark is that place
where I search every corner for my wrongdoings,
where (often on my knees) I beg forgiveness–
from you who read this.
Toward the end of the book, Newberry’s poem, “Deference,” announces: “Today I will look for astonishment / damned if I won’t!” She adds, “I will invent a new language of praise today.”
Surely a praise poem can be an act of defiance!
If book titles are doorways into themes and glyphs are arbitrary symbols, each of Newberry’s poems are glimmers into her world. With images of water and wind susurrating through the collection, these bits of information and each poem function as glyphs or hieroglyphs. Another clue toward Newberry’s point of view emerges as the poem “That Hour” begins: “The hour between dog and wolf / is ripe with trepidation.” The hour between dog and wolf is the hour of twilight but also refers to risk taking. Newberry’s poems hint at both directly and metaphorically.
Newberry’s references to symbols allude to disjunctions between real life events and the words/symbols used to depict them. Franklin’s Buddhist concept of full emptinessseeks to distinguish between the way things appear and the way they actually are. Both poets here study life to pursue these connections as they continue to address life head on.
The beauty of language and the sage wisdom of mindful lives resonate within these poetry collections. Jeffrey Franklin’s rhythm and rhymes, along with Buddhist concepts complement Martina Reisz Newberry’s free verse of urban Los Angeles. Both poets reflect on their journeys through the world and find the most healing response is praise. Kudos to both poets for enriching the world by sharing their gifts.
Other books by Martina from Deerbrook Editions:
Blues for French Roast with Chicory
Deerbrook Editions 