|
Self-Portrait with Thorns
by Gail Goepfert
47 Poems ~ 88 Pages
Price: $16.00
Publisher: Glass Lyre Press
ISBN: ISBN: 978-1-94178378-8
ISBN-13 : 978-1941783788
To Order: gaile13@aol.com or Glass Lyre Press
or Amazon
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
In one of the poems from a recent collection by your reviewer, I took on the daunting task of writing a poem about Frida Kahlo’s iconic 1929 painting, The Bus. In researching Kahlo’s life, as I prepared to write my poem, I learned about the incredible suffering she had endured. Here is an excerpt from my poem “Broken”:
How much suffering can one life take?
the bus crash at age 18
the crushed foot
the dislocated shoulder
the broken collar bone, ribs and leg
the same leg would get gangrene
and yield to temptation
the spine and pelvis splintered into pieces
your life, like that of Jesus, disfigured,
acquainted with suffering.
My brief linkage to Frida Kahlo’s life became a clarifying lens in my reading of Gail Goepfert’s moving new collection, Self-Portrait with Thorns. Goepfert’s choice of title is a shortening of one of Kahlo’s most famous works, Self-Portrait with Thorn, Necklace and Hummingbird, (1940).
It is hard to say which of Frida Kahlo’s 200 paintings is the most famous or the most valuable. Today, Kahlo’s paintings are considered priceless national treasures by her native country, Mexico.
Of far greater import to her disciples is Kahlo's life-example. Her lifelong joust with suf-fering has served to infuse fresh vigor into sister sufferers. Gail Goepfert is among those. As author Emily Pérez points out, Frida Kahlo “serves as mentor, muse, and mirror” for Goepfert, “as she negotiates her own life with chronic pain.”
A Word about Style
Goepfert’s writing style reflects her subject. Of the 47 poems comprising the collection, roughly 15 feature indentations which dance all over the printed page. The majority reside flush left against the margin. While I am not a fan of “wildly” indented poems, Goepfert has convinced me otherwise. Presentation on the page is often crucial to message. I have not always appreciated this. How does a poet depict acute suffering? How does she present chaos? How does she convey anguish that seemingly has no explicable beginning and no ending in sight? These poems slowed me down. I became more deliberate. Enjoyment in-creased. Goepfert’s style has everything to do with substance. Here is an example from “A Mind on Pain”:
a fistful of amber
buffets the window–
the blind’s slats
splinter
light into golden bars
still morning
lie down just a minute breathe
The poet's decisions about phrase-placement and even line-spacing are strategic. Part of a plan to move the reader in a certain direction. The best poets know how to do this.
Clearly, Goepfert has studied Kahlo’s life and work. This does not mean that her poetry plays the role of sycophant. An excerpt from “Guilty” offers a marvelous contextual perspective on what the artist’s life means to her:
Guilty [The Poet Says]
of falling in with worshipers
who would make Frida an icon,
I’m swayable when the earth splits,
drawn to her spine and flaw
and ripeness–she, an incarnation
of fresh courage. She does not veil
her image behind a scrim of muslin.
I too latch on to her painted mayhem
in undiluted color on canvas,
mingle with her idolators.
The poem continues toward a lovely conclusion in which the poet finds in Kahlo’s life a “pattern” for her own life … “the rough fabric of her.”
Self-Portrait with Thorns is an ekphrastic collection which responds to the great diversity of Frida Kahlo’s work. It is hard to produce one definitive term to describe Kahlo as a painter. Surrealism comes to mind. However, Kahlo refuses to be run into a corner. I have seen the term “broken woman art.” I like that. Kahlo’s paintings constitute a kind of self-awareness with many tears. The many facets of her sufferings are more than most people ever experience. Yet, there is no extreme in common experience that Kahlo’s life doesn’t touch. This is the key to Goepfert’s collection. She and so many other women have, at last, found a sister that knows and appreciates who they are and what they go through.
A side benefit for this reviewer has been an increased interest in going online to view the art of Frida Kahlo. I was captivated. I was moved. Her paintings spoke to me.
I wondered what it might be like to sit in Frida Kahlo’s presence, if only for a moment. Goepfert anticipated my question, in her poem, “If I Could Lunch with Frida, I’d Tell Her Why”:
I’ve turned my gaze to her body
punctured, crooked
like a young cypress
bent to the spoils of wind–
willing her limbs to swallow
what comes.
Our bodies, hers and mine,
have an appetite for pain.
What is there to do when
betrayal wears pants–or skirts.
In the glow of a cigarette’s burn,
she tosses ash. Swears.
Withdraws. I bottle up.
Fish for the solace of sea.
We scrabble about for remedies.
Frantic. Feed an obsession for answers.
Does she catalog hope
the way I do–
by the timbre of a doctor’s voice?
by the list of doctors yet unseen,
the treatments yet untried?
I window her eyes–
will myself
to be fierce like Frida
|
