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Diamonds, Poems by Camille Guthrie ff. With Diamonds, Camille Guthrie lets her hair down. If Mrs. Maisel and T.S. Eliot had a love child, it would be Diamonds. I laughed my way through many of these poems but still took care to keep my iPad handy. After all, there was plenty to check up on: Picts, Sei Shōnagun, a host of erudite references as well as images of the abundant paintings and sculptures embedded in the poetry, providing us with glimpses of other times, and a new perspective on our own times. Real life is the subject. But here real life is comprehensive -- it includes the mortgage, the kids, the imagination (why shouldn’t she poet beat out Fanny for Keats – after all she could offer antibiotics), Madame Du Barry, all the paintings in the Clark Art Institute, unfinished novels, Syrian missing children, sex, and love. One image I did not have to google is A Young Daughter of the Picts as this is on the cover of the book. The narrator of this poem is the young daughter herself, spelling out a to do list. One idea: “Strut around the shire like I’m all that in my new flower tattoos.” Another: “Build a bonfire to signal the Romans. I hear they have cute haircuts.’ Somehow I feel I taught this girl (multiple times) at Friends Seminary. Camille used this interplay of visual art and poetic art (ekphrasis) in her previous work, In Captivity, which was inspired by the tapestries in the Cloisters. Because the dominant voice in this collection is so earthy and immediate, the allusions to paintings and to literature are absorbed into the persona’s consciousness. In the first poem, Hey Virgil, I thought at first that Virgil was a building super, but think again. It is that other Virgil as he is depicted by Dante, the guide to hell. I guess that makes it clear what her life feels like. But hyperbole, which Camille is very good at, is also the stuff of comedy. In all the enchanting anachronisms and magical whimsy of these poems there is always a tie to this life now. In To Bring you the News, the poet says, “Yet the real prevails/ The sea level rises idealism falls/And ruthless ideologies abound/Put your head down/We have serious work to do.” I think this is a work that readers will return to over and over. It mystifies and throws the reader off balance but in a way to make us more curious, more intent on mulling just a bit more. It takes on voices from the past and from works of art. Such delights as an apostrophe to H. D., a look at Seneca, a dating profile of Bosch (the painter, not the detective), and a monologue by Madame du Barry invite us to linger. Single mothers who have raised kids on a shoestring while trying to keep alive a life of the mind and soul will love this book. (Oh yes, that was me. )

Domina Virgin Mater Trix: The Kaleidoscopic Identity of Women by Christel Johnson f. Christel’s book is a copiously researched scholarly study, that shows how stereotypes rearrange themselves like DNA (her metaphor) generating unique literary and real-life heroines. The title refers to four female stereotypes that have endured over the centuries. After a presentation of structuralist/post structuralist theoretical grounding, based on the work of, among others, Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva, Christel explores how these stereotypical roles play out in classical Greek and Roman literature as well as in the chosen persona of Queen Elizabeth I. Christel’s analyses of Sophocles’ Antigone or the Greek goddesses or the beloved of Catullus lead back to her central idea -- the women of literature cannot be pinned down to one type. They may assume the power of domina even as virgin maidens or display maternal characteristics even while manipulating men for treasure. (Trix is a short form of meretrix, courtesan, and seems to mean here any woman who manipulates male partners for material gain. ) These female literary characters are, of course, created by male authors; even if they are based on real, living women, they are depicted through a male lens. In the final chapter of the book we find a woman manipulating these types to her own ends; it is an enlightening portrait of the virgin Queen, who chose to rule like a man – domina in the extreme – and to view herself through what came to her from the classics. Sometimes scholarly work can be as exciting as an action film. Christel delves into the inner workings of this powerful ruler by scrutinizing three revelatory portraits. Very clever and –well—thrilling.

Flower Diary, In which Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries, and Opens a Door by Molly Peacock ff. The beauty of Flower Diary is not confined to its poetic prose; the tactile and visual elegance of the book itself is a complementary pleasure. The exquisite paintings reproduced in each chapter, the use of shaded pages to mark interludes, the very quality of the paper make this an objet d’art you will not be tempted to earmark. Contrary to my usual careless habits, I used an old pressed-flower bookmark as I read. Like Molly’s earlier book, The Paper Garden, this work is a blend of biography and memoir. As a paleontologist reconstructs a prehistoric animal from the fossil of one paw, Molly takes the limited clues to the life of Mary Hiester Reid (1854-1921) and brings her to life. Having discovered a postcard Mary once sent, Molly conjures the scene. Instead of a lifeless postcard, we see what must have been – a thoughtful MHR in her confining gown, long sleeved and high collared. licking the stamp. Not simply the account of a gifted painter, Flower Diary discloses a female artist crafting a way for creative life and marriage to coexist. As Molly puts it, “in a world of misogyny as dense as and threatening as any fairy tale forest, they painted together, side by side.” This harmony between artistic work and marriage is the door MHR gently unsealed, an opening which benefited future generations of creative women, including Molly herself. As Molly considered marrying her high school beau, who came back into her life after more than 20 years, she found her own key. She could sink deep into “that place of metaphor” where her full consciousness was far from the surface world, and he would respect her need for concentration. With him, she could compose a sonnet without worrying about getting the bends from being called back too quickly from the murky deep. That place of metaphor is not easily accessible to most of us, but Molly’s writing pulls us into it. Even if we don’t generate our own metaphors, we can read our way to a place of almost mystical flow. Precious Japanese ukiyo-e (woodblock art that means ‘floating world”) floated to France as wrapping paper for artifacts, eventually inspiring artists including MHR and Bonnard and Villard. The stream affected Molly in her love of the haiku. Connections unrelated to chronology abound in the floating flowing space-time continuum of this work. Many of MHR’s paintings are of gorgeous flowers in vases. Molly’s descriptions are lessons in seeing. “Delicate pinks underpin the white roses like lingerie beneath pale gowns.” Molly prepared the reader for this simile by exploring MHR’s training, painting the human body. Reminded of the stringent dress code for women of the era, we see that sometimes a rose is not just a rose. Reading always strikes me as a privilege and never more than in reading Flower Diary. Molly’s writing is generous. She lets us see as much of her mind as can be safely revealed. She interacts with her subjects with an open heart. The book is uplifting and heartbreaking. Like her subject, she has opened a door.