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Showing posts with label Theresa Rodriquez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theresa Rodriquez. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Andrew Benson Brown Reviews Poems by "The Sonnet Queen"

 

“The Singing Lines of Theresa Rodriguez: A Review of Sonnets”

by Andrew Benson Brown

 

Title: Sonnets

Author: Theresa Rodriguez

Publisher: Shanti Arts LLC

Publisher Website: www.shantiarts.com

ISBN: 978-1951651350

Released July 2020

$12.95 (print, soft cover, perfect bound)

80 pages

Purchase 


 

Theresa Rodriguez was called "The Sonnet Queen" by one of her other appreciators following a recent public reading she gave. While there are a few other women, and not that many more men, who have written and published sonnets in our time (not exactly a popular genre compared to the fad of 'instapoetry'), she is the only contemporaneous 'female sonneteer' I know of—which is to say, the only woman who has written many sonnets, a la Shakespeare, and published a book exclusively devoted to the craft.

 

In his literary criticism, William Empson showed a subtle attention to what he called the singing line.” In her new collection of poetry, Sonnets, Rodriguez raises this concern for the musicality of verse to a spiritual level. Take the first stanza of The Sacred Harp:

 

The music, oh the music starts, and we

Begin to sing in skillful harmony;

Begin to sing in sweet simplicity;

Begin to sing in deep complexity.

 

As both a poet and a trained classical singer, Rodriguez is more consciously aware of the musicality of poetry than most, and it is not surprising that other poems in this collection such as The Piano,’ and Oh, When I Hear,’ also take music as a subject. Most are of course not directly about music, per se, though all display the melodious qualities of regular meter and perfect rhyme. Those that do take music as their surface-level subject are really avenues of exploring larger themes: a panegyric to a Steinway as an expression of ideal beauty, suffering as a path to where a truth, so sacred, may be found,” and, in The Sacred Harp,’ the worship of Gods mystery.

 

In just these three poems, Rodriguezs work captures what poetry (and I would add, most great art in general) is meant to do: to capture truth, beauty, and goodness. Poets, those writers who carefully order their words to make of it a musical language and to use metaphors liberally, are those beings most suited to drawing comparisons in the order of creation. Rodriguez seems to implicitly understand this idea that poetry is, perhaps after pure music, the straightest vehicle to God. Sonnet for the Sonnet-Maker,’ is addressed to God Himself, and draws our attention to how the elegance of iambic pentameter dominates so much of the King James Bible:

 

You know the beats and rhythms, the iamb

Which pulses like a crippled-legged walk;

You, with the force of one who said, I am

That I am,” in iambs you will talk

Of truth and beauty, pain and sorrow, all

And nothing, touching both Heaven and Hell

In what you speak and say…

 

Cripple-legged walk” is a brilliant detail: a phrase that at once mimetically describes the iambic line, and with it our relationship to God. It finely illustrates Aquinass concept of analogical predication, and how words may be understood two different ways as they apply to two different levels of being. God, I am that I am,” knows the beats and rhythms” of the iamb, and communicates to us in His cripple-legged walk” because we, as bipedaled, fallen creatures, must use words to hobble towards He who soars. In Sonnet Sonnet’ Rodriguez repeats this imagery with variation to refer to the three poets with sonnet forms named after them. Being mere mortals (though ones who approach the divine closer than others), the cripple-rhythmed beauty” of Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Spenser is emphasized for their more delimited abilities to exercise Condensed and distilled thought,” rather than to touch Heaven and Hell or to recall the void.

 

In CCP and Falun Gong Sonnet,’ the first-person narrator awakens on an operating table with one or two less internal organs: Go, invoke / your party loyalty as I am cut / And mutilated.” From communing with the deities in golden ages of yore, we have degenerated to living in a Kafkaesque world where the muse is an anonymous bureaucrat singing of zoning laws.

 

Rodriguez expresses her own sense of belief in opposition to pernicious modern tendencies in the sonnet, In This Post-Christian Era,’ as well as in a number of other poems in the collection that explore her faith. These tend to come in the latter half of the book; they are preceded by reflections on the art of sonnet-writing and relationships, and precede in turn final poems on the decay of time. One might roughly divide the collection into four sections dominated by these themes (though there are also a few on political and historical subjects interspersed throughout). The move from writing, to love, to God, to the passing of things would seem to be no accident, and this framework offers further proof that Theresa Rodriguez is an artist who speaks to the soul.

 

The straightforwardness of many titles (Spenserian Sonnet,’ ‘Petrarchan Sonnet,’ etc.) are mirrored in the candor of Rodriguezs personal, often self-conscious, reflections on all of the topics mentioned; and the variety of sonnet-styles she mixes (sometimes within a single poem) echo the variety of topics. The pathos of certain poems is balanced by a mimetic wit in others. In Enjambment sonnet,’ the lines begin in terse sentences that give way to longer ones that flow over, preventing isolation between lines. The weight of the line is shifted to the beginning and middle rather than the end, as the addressee is enjoined to

 

Dissent! The point

Is to surprise. Surprise! Then negate

All smoothed-out evenness.

 

The carefully chosen end word point” gives a sense of periodization before rushing us along to the next line, as the author negates” the usual expectations of the poetic line. The brief imperative, Think!” is sandwiched at the midpoint of the line before the final couplet. And then think more,” we are told. Theresa here shows us that the art of poetry, while inventive, is more than mere spontaneity. In the equally clever Five Minute Sonnet,’ the narrator opens the first stanza relating doubts as to whether such a thing can be done, increases in confidence during the second stanza, and describes the flow of how, The lines just come so quickly to my mind,” in the third, until hitting writers block in the final couplet. Artlessness in art is not really a thing, aside from occasional brief spurts as the one that resulted in ColeridgeKubla Khan,’ following waking from an opium dream. Lacking drugs for stimulation, most examples of effortlessness are only apparent—the Muse only descends upon one after long reflection. Examples of pure spontaneity that contemporary free-verse poets often brag about are simply the results of museless minds.

 

In poems like Annelid Sonnet,’ ‘Cut Sonnet,’ and Homeless Sonnet,’ each titular analogy is at once partly autobiographical, a description of her subject matter on love or pain, and a metaphor for the artistic process. In Sonnet of the Hardened Heart,’ she employs crustaceous imagery to create an analogy with the relation between flesh and spirit:

 

Care less, I warn myself; bother no more

With inner crevices: prying the shell

Like scabs (rough, oozing, sore), which crust, but tell

Of tumults against the psychic seabed floor;

It is in vain.

 

She goes on to pile images on top of one another to convey a sense of being entombed” within her existence: the meat” is like newborn skin” and the vaginal flower.” The effect on display here is an example of William Empsons second of the seven types of ambiguity he describes in his book of that name: when two or more meanings are resolved into one for purposes of building psychological complexity.

 

Rodriguez often undertakes to explore her conceptual themes through a repetition of abstract words. Most of these occur in poems about the self-reflexivity of writing, and occasionally in poems about capturing the divine. In Earl of Oxenfords Sonnet’ she defines a term with itself (For truth is truth, and you do shake a spear…”) to justify the narrators euphoria in discovering the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship. In Form Sonnet’ there is the nested identification-turned-negation of

 

….the freedom that free form can miss.

 

For freedom in most freedom is remiss

In finding beauty in this poetry.

 

Rodriguez here highlights the contradictory nature of free verse: that through its own lack of discipline it loses the quality it seeks to define itself through. Referring then to her own penchant for poetic structure she writes, In building such some scoffers might dismiss: / But such is perfect perfection to me.” Here the placement of perfection” upsets the hitherto perfect meter of the stanza, creating an ironic effect.

 

This placing of the same abstract term adjacently to itself as a different part of speech occurs in several other poems in the collection. In The Simple, Stalwart Faith,’ she asks, Where is the light / that lit this darkened darkness?” She could have used deepened,’ to modify darkness” or some other synonym of intensified’ to make her point, yet she chose to use the same word to emphasize the depth and doubling of a metaphysical condition once was lit” by light.” In the next line, Now I strive to say regurgitated prayers,” she further emphasizes the sense of monotony to the rituals that underlie her doubts. Some might see the use of abstractions in this way as a weakness that undermines the purpose of poetry, whose strength lies in the use of sensual imagery; Rodriguez, though, seems to use them to careful effect in most places in a way that reflects her themes.

 

The William Empson quote about the singing line” cited at the beginning of this essay is better applied to Rodriguez than even Empson himself—a modernist poet whose verse reflects his admiration for scientism by employing objective diction, and as such can sometimes falls rather flat. Rodriguez writes in a straightforward and clear style, and while her poems operate on different levels, there is little thats overtly contradictory in a head-scratching way. With a few possible exceptions, the reader seldom stops to invent interpretations or tease apart multiple meanings that must be held in the mind at once. These are poems that can be appreciated by the average literate person, as well as the more sophisticated enthusiast.

 

Theresa’s website is www.bardsinger.com.


MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

 

Andrew Benson Brown is a poet who lives in rural Missouri. In exile from urbane delights and perversions, he spends his days tending to the needs of the downtrodden. At night he enters the ancient courts of ancient men, via the Internet Archive. He is currently in the early stages of writing a mock epic poem about the American Revolution.

 

Andrew Benson Brown Reviews Poems by "The Sonnet Queen"


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 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. Reviewers will have a special interest in the chapter on how to make reviewing pay, either as way to market their own books or as a career path--ethically!

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Saturday, April 18, 2020

Poet Carol Smallwood Interviews Theresa Rodriguez




Shanti Arts LLC
ISBN: 978-1-951651-22-0 (print; softcover; perfect bound)
Released March 2020; $8.95; 48 pages
Order at Amazon
Author: Theresa Rodriguez
Author's Website: www.bardsinger.com

Interview by Carol Smallwood


Longer Thoughts is the third book of poetry by Theresa Rodriguez, a retired classical singer and voice teacher who holds a Bachelor of Arts in vocal music performance from Skidmore College and a Master of Music with distinction in voice pedagogy and performance from Westminster Choir College. A native Manhattanite, she now lives outside of Philadelphia. With deep emotion, Longer Thoughts presents poems on such topics as: love, beauty, mortality, aging, and theological questioning. "In fo "In fourteen lines, her sonnets in particular are able to communicate what takes essayists and writers thousands of wordsines, her sonnets in particular are able to 

 Smallwood: Why did you call your new collection Longer Thoughts? 


As opposed to my previous collection of sonnets, Longer Thoughts contains many longer poems in a variety of forms as well as free verse. It is a small collection but diverse in its range of subjects.


Smallwood: When did you begin writing poetry? Do you do other kinds of writing also?

I am sure I began writing poetry in earnest when I was about ten and by high school had some poems published in my school's literary magazine. In addition to poetry, I have written articles for Classical Singer Magazine on a myriad of topics of interest to classical singers. When I was a young mother I wrote a book entitled Diaper Changes: The Complete Diapering Book and Resource Guide and had articles about cloth diapering published by various parenting magazines. My book When Adoption Fails explores my life story as an adoptee in a dysfunctional adoptive situation. In Warning Signs of Abuse: Get Out Early and Stay Free Forever I provide encouragement and instruction to women in abusive relationships. I am sure I have a few more books inside of me yet to come! I have also begun writing book reviews as well.

  
Smallwood: What are the classical poetry forms that appear in Longer Thoughts and what did Evan Mantyk of the Society of Classical Poets comment about your sonnets? 

In Longer Thoughts I have included the villanelle, rondeau, triolet, ode and sonnet forms, in addition to free verse. Of my sonnets Mr. Mantyk has said, “In fourteen lines, her sonnets in particular are able to communicate what takes essayists and writers thousands of words.” I have endeavored to branch out to other forms while maintaining my inclination towards the sonnet. I have also begun writing in the Petrarchan, rather than mainly Shakespearean, sonnet form and have some examples of this in Longer Thoughts.


Smallwood: How do you use symbolism and imagery in Longer Thoughts?

There are three poems in particular that use symbolism and imagery in Longer Thoughts. In the poignant free verse “China Crystal Fairy” I describe a “delicate fairy creature” which symbolizes a particularly fragile relationship that I had broken apart though my own clumsiness. In another free verse entitled “Full Circle” I use the imagery of a tree and the fullness of its life cycle to symbolize the aging process. In the sonnet “The Rise of Fall” I also reflect on the aging process by comparing its phases to the four seasons.


Smallwood: What are some magazines your poetry has appeared?

My poetry has appeared in the Midwest Poetry Review, the Journal of Religion and Intellectual Life, an Anabaptist publication entitled Leaf MagazineThe Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Mezzo Cammin: An Online Journal of Formalist Poetry by WomenSpindrift, the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, and the Society of Classical Poets.



Smallwood: Please tell readers about your activities with the Society of Classical Poets:


My work began appearing with the Society of Classical Poets in 2014. In June of 2019 I and three other poets—James Sale, James B. Nicola, and Mark Stone—participated in a poetry reading at Bryant Park in New York City where we each read from American poets including Poe's “The Raven” and then read selections of our own work. This year I am one of four featured poets who will be reading at the 2020 Society of Classical Poets Symposium. My background as a classical singer has given me the ability to render my spoken poetry in an interesting and engaging way without being overly dramatic.



Smallwood: One of your poems is about keeping a journal. When did you begin writing one and how does it help:

My first poems began appearing as diary entries in junior high school. As I mention in the sonnet “My Journal,” the place where I write is “a sanctuary, hallowed space.” It is where I work out the rough drafts of my work, prune and hew and adjust and temper what I have done, as I craft it into art. I am not a very fluid writer and there are lots of marginalia and scribbled out lines and words in my journals. What I usually do these days, is get the poem written to a basic condition, then type it up on my computer, edit it and prune it some more, and then again, and again, as many times as necessary, and then transcribe it back into my journal, so that I have both the rough material and finished product in the same place. It helps to have a journal because it is my workshop, my studio, where I can work hard and get dirty and then preserve a polished work at the end of my endeavors.



Smallwood: Do you have ideas for your next book?

I am currently working with Shanti Arts to publish Sonnets in an enlarged second edition. Since the first edition in 2019 I have begun writing in the Petrarchan sonnet form and these as well as other new poems will be a valuable addition to my current sonnet collection.


MORE ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER



Carol Smallwood, MLS, MA, Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, is a literary reader, judge, interviewer; her 13th collection is Thread, Form, and Other Enclosures (Main Street Rag, 2020)




MORE ABOUT THE  BLOGGER AND WAYS TO GET THE MOST FROM THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. Reviewers will have a special interest in the chapter on how to make reviewing pay, either as way to market their own books or as a career path--ethically!

This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.




Wednesday, April 1, 2020

James Sale Reviews Classic Poetry


Theresa Rodriguez, Jesus and ErosSonnets, Poems and Songs 
Author: Theresa Rodrigues
ISBN 13: 978-0-96569555-6-5)
and Sonnets 
Author: Theresa Fodriques
ISBN 13: 978-0-9656955-8-9)
Author's Website: www.bardsinger.com
Genre: Poetry
Original Publisher:  The Society of Classical Poets, Evan Mantyk, publisher 


Reviewed by James Sale originally for JamesSalePoetry.web.com


These two collections comprise a total of 79 poems (if we include the songs too), although there is some overlap of sonnets, some of which appear in both collections. Three themes stand out: one, a spiritual longing for union with God which is underpinned by her sense of her own unworthiness and sin; two, a deep but very measured eroticism (no filth in other words) which explores failed relationships and the fantasies of the longing mind; and third, the act of writing itself as a purgative or panacea for the afflictions life has vented on her. This last point is important too, since it is why she has developed a fascination with forms and structures as she seeks to communicate, understand and order her experiences. I would observe—I think justly—that by far and away her best poetry are those poems (of which there are many) in which she uses form, rhyme and meter, and where the verse is free, I find the poems far less effective.

The strength of Rodriguez as a poet is in her ability to access and confront her emotional states directly. She does occasionally comment on wanting to come up with original ideas, but this is a mistake: she is not a poet made to impress us with new ideas hatched in the mind; she is a poet who speaks from the heart. We see this in contrasting a poem that appeared on the pages of The Society of Classical Poets, “Writer’s Block,” and its concluding lines:

“Oh, would that something fresh would come to me,
Not what amounts to sheer banality!”

This is fun but no more than that. Contrast that with this first line from “Finale”:

“The rigor mortis of my love for you has not set in.”

Phew! That is pretty startling on a number of levels. Or take her poem, “Sweet Bird,” where I would ask is this really about a bird as we are “awaiting your long descent”? There is a plangent eroticism in all this suggestive of a lover to be; the bird is always “he.”

And again, the concluding stanza of “Shaman of the Waves” also captures something of her intense yet understated erotic power:

“And so we are of polar force
that meets in synergy;
you are the shaman of the waves;
I am the sea.”

But having said earlier that there are three main themes, they of course blend in all sorts of ways. Indeed, the title of her first collection, Jesus and Eros, might appear to be such a blend as well as being oxymoronic in its mixing of the sacred and the sensual. Here, however, I am reminded of two lines from a C.H. Sisson’s poem, “A Letter to John Donne”:

“That the vain, the ambitious and the highly sexed
Are the natural prey of the incarnate Christ.”

That is beautifully put; he was of course referring to John Donne in terms of the three attributes, but certainly the “highly sexed” applies to Rodriguez’ writing. And since she writes frequently in sonnet form it is worth contrasting her efforts with another favourite sonneteer, who writes occasionally on these pages, Joseph Charles Mackenzie. Whereas Mackenzie’s sonnets are usually theological, public and “objective,” Rodriguez’ are confessional, intimate and “subjective.” Both, of course, have their own strengths, but how different they can be!

In Rodriguez we have the sense of a soul longing for order, for discipline, for that unreserved giving for the great cause of either passion or love. One suspects that in another life Rodriguez would have made a formidable nun or saint of an order. Take her “Platonic Sonnet”:

“I hope that by a deprivation all
Might turn into a longing at your core.”

Or, from “You’ve Made It Clear”:

“For though I’ve longed for you in every way,
I also love enough to stay away.”

Or, from “Simple Little Things”:

“Do you have any sense of what can be
Within a body touched by loneliness?”

The poems, then, at their best can be touching, affecting and profoundly felt experiences, and I think represent real poetry from a real soul whom the Muse has visited. Perhaps one final great example, where Rodriguez brings it all together in the concluding couplet of a sonnet is “Grey Sonnet” (yes, she uses the English spelling!):

“For grey to dwell alone is grey indeed
When colors yearn to contrast, blend and bleed.”

That is wonderful writing, and a quite brilliant sonnet that I invite everyone to read and find its joys for themselves. And as a footnote, “bleed” is a favourite word of Rodriguez.

Regular readers of the pages of The Society of Classical Poets will also be heartened to know that Rodriguez’ strong religious beliefs lead her to reject much of the feminist and other contemporary claptrap that passes for thought. Her poem, “Goodbye, Sweet Fetal Child,” is a searing indictment of “hedonistic choice” abortion. There is, then, so much to recommend in her poetry. But where, perhaps, may there be improvements?

I think the major fault in these collections is in the editing. First, the collections could be tighter – some poems do not justify their place in the collections, and if we take Sonnets, then 37 is not a number I recognise! Shakespeare had 154 (11 x 14, the number of lines in a sonnet) and Mackenzie has 77 (half 154). 33 is good (Dante liked the number) and 36 is also good (4 x 9 or 3 x 12): one poem that should be omitted is “The Earl of Oxford’s Sonnet” which seeks to assert that Shakespeare did not write his plays. Quite apart from the fact that he did, as I have explained on the pages of The Society of Classical Poets, it should be obvious from all I have said about Rodriguez’ poetry that this is not a suitable theme for her: it is academic, dry-as-dust, and not from the heart. Why bother? It’s a weak poem anyway.

Second, on the editing front, the proofing needs improving, and most particularly in the area of punctuation. Punctuation is intermittent in places; if Rodriguez were E.E. Cummings, then that might be justified, but in writing traditional sonnets I think punctuation is not a burden but a major semantic benefit. Her sonnet, “I Cannot Write,” is I think impaired by its lack of punctuation. So I would ask her to rethink her punctuation policy for future poems.

But my criticisms must be considered inconsequential compared with the praise I wish to lavish on her collections: they are a real achievement. The poetry contains some dazzling truths as she unashamedly faces the demons of herself, her life and her imaginings. Let me leave you with her couplet from “I Wake My Eyes”:

“For everything is better when from cares
We turn our full attention to our prayers.”

Simple, direct, child-like, but massively affecting with all the potency of truth. Read Theresa Rodriguez.

About the Author

Theresa Rodriguez is the author three books of poetry, including Longer Thoughts, which is being published by Shanti Arts in 2020. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Religion and Intellectual LifeLeaf Magazine, Classical Singer Magazine, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal PoetryMezzo Cammin, and the Society of Classical Poets, where she is a contributing member. Her website is www.bardsinger.com.

About the Reviewer

James Sale has been a writer for over 50 years, and has had over 40 books published, including 8 collections of poetry, as well as books from Macmillan/Nelson (The Poetry Show volumes 1, 2, 3), Pearson/York Notes (Macbeth, Six Women Poets), and other major publishers. He won first prize in The Society of Classical Poets' 2017 poetry competition and now serves on their Advisory Board, the only Brit to do so. He regularly writes on culture for New York's The Epoch Times.


James Sale Reviews Classic Poetry


MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Authors, readers, publishers, and reviewers may republish their favorite reviews of books they want to share with others. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read and love. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page and in a tab at the top of this blog's home page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites so it may be used a resource for most anyone in the publishing industry. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. #TheFrugalbookPromoter, #CarolynHowardJohnson, #TheNewBookReview, #TheFrugalEditor, #SharingwithWriters, #reading #BookReviews #GreatBkReviews #BookMarketing