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  • Women and Ghosts by Kristina Marie Darling Book Preview

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    Geoffrey Gatza
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    Why is there so much language, so many words I didn't want." Darling's collection interrogates a legacy of literary women that haunt our subconscious through paralleling a female narrator's mental strife alongside Shakespeare's tragic women: Ophelia, Juliet, Desdemona, Cleopatra, and more. Darling follows the trails of blood left on the page to explore violence done to women, both emotionally and physically. Through Darling's innovative forms, she's able to render the classical refreshingly new and chillingly devastating. Her writing, however, hits a more sensitive nerve: the terror of gendered violence and the chafing of powerlessness in womanhood, as her characters "cleave under the weight of my own dress." Yet, power is embedded in Darling's words, sharp and cutting as a razor blade: this is a collection all women should read. —Anne Champion, author of Reluctant Mistress and The Dark Length Home Women and Ghosts is a book for the brokenhearted: "Iced over with sadness," its speaker says (or doesn't), "I can no longer speak." In ghost text stricken from the record, she also says (or doesn't): "I wonder how someone else's life can seem so much my own." She means Desdemona's. Ophelia's. Juliet's. Cleopatra's. Lavinia's. But when I read these words, I think: not theirs, hers — I wonder how her life can seem so much my own. I love this book. I honor it. I cherish it. I lose myself in its tragedies, in the absences and silences of women's lives and I feel less desperate, less anxious, less alone. —Molly Gaudry, author of We Take Me Apart and Desire: A Haunting Kristina Marie Darling is the author of over twenty collections of poetry and hybrid prose, which include VOW, PETRARCHAN, and FAILURE LYRIC, forthcoming from BlazeVOX Books. Her writing has been described by literary critics as “haunting,” “mesmerizing,” and “complex.” Poet and Kenyon Review editor Zach Savich writes that her body of work is a “singularly graceful and stunningly incisive exploration of poetic insight, vision, and transformation.” Donald Revell writes of her SELECTED POEMS, “Here is a new tradition, alive in bright air.” Kristina’s books have also been reviewed widely in literary magazines, including The Boston Review, Ploughshares, The Colorado Review, The Columbia Poetry Review, Rain Taxi, The Mid-American Review, Pleiades, and The Southern Humanities Review. Within the past few years, her writing has been honored with a Yaddo residency, a Hawthornden Castle Fellowship, and a Visiting Artist Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome. She has also held artist-in-residence fellowships at the Ucross Foundation, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Hambidge Center for the Arts and Sciences, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, the Santa Fe Art Institute, and numerous other institutions. Kristina is the recipient of international literary arts fellowships from Le Moulin à Nef (VCCA France), the Tenòt Foundation (France), the B.A.U. Institute (Italy), and 360 Xochi Quetzal (Mexico), as well as grants from the Kittredge Fund, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation Archive Center. Her work has also been recognized with the Dan Liberthson Prize from the Academy of American Poets and nominations for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award, the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award, the San Francisco State University Poetry Center Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Kristina is active as a literary critic, with reviews and essays appearing in such magazines as The Gettysburg Review, The Boston Review, The Colorado Review, Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, and New Letters. Her critical projects have been supported by grants from the University of Missouri and the University at Buffalo, as well as a Riverrun Foun

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    Why is there so much language, so many words I didn't want." Darling's collection interrogates a legacy of literary women that haunt our subconscious through paralleling a female narrator's mental strife alongside Shakespeare's tragic women: Ophelia, Juliet, Desdemona, Cleopatra, and more. Darling follows the trails of blood left on the page to explore violence done to women, both emotionally and physically. Through Darling's innovative forms, she's able to render the classical refreshingly new and chillingly devastating. Her writing, however, hits a more sensitive nerve: the terror of gendered violence and the chafing of powerlessness in womanhood, as her characters "cleave under the weight of my own dress." Yet, power is embedded in Darling's words, sharp and cutting as a razor blade: this is a collection all women should read. —Anne Champion, author of Reluctant Mistress and The Dark Length Home Women and Ghosts is a book for the brokenhearted: "Iced over with sadness," its speaker says (or doesn't), "I can no longer speak." In ghost text stricken from the record, she also says (or doesn't): "I wonder how someone else's life can seem so much my own." She means Desdemona's. Ophelia's. Juliet's. Cleopatra's. Lavinia's. But when I read these words, I think: not theirs, hers — I wonder how her life can seem so much my own. I love this book. I honor it. I cherish it. I lose myself in its tragedies, in the absences and silences of women's lives and I feel less desperate, less anxious, less alone. —Molly Gaudry, author of We Take Me Apart and Desire: A Haunting Kristina Marie Darling is the author of over twenty collections of poetry and hybrid prose, which include VOW, PETRARCHAN, and FAILURE LYRIC, forthcoming from BlazeVOX Books. Her writing has been described by literary critics as “haunting,” “mesmerizing,” and “complex.” Poet and Kenyon Review editor Zach Savich writes that her body of work is a “singularly graceful and stunningly incisive exploration of poetic insight, vision, and transformation.” Donald Revell writes of her SELECTED POEMS, “Here is a new tradition, alive in bright air.” Kristina’s books have also been reviewed widely in literary magazines, including The Boston Review, Ploughshares, The Colorado Review, The Columbia Poetry Review, Rain Taxi, The Mid-American Review, Pleiades, and The Southern Humanities Review. Within the past few years, her writing has been honored with a Yaddo residency, a Hawthornden Castle Fellowship, and a Visiting Artist Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome. She has also held artist-in-residence fellowships at the Ucross Foundation, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Hambidge Center for the Arts and Sciences, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, the Santa Fe Art Institute, and numerous other institutions. Kristina is the recipient of international literary arts fellowships from Le Moulin à Nef (VCCA France), the Tenòt Foundation (France), the B.A.U. Institute (Italy), and 360 Xochi Quetzal (Mexico), as well as grants from the Kittredge Fund, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation Archive Center. Her work has also been recognized with the Dan Liberthson Prize from the Academy of American Poets and nominations for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award, the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award, the San Francisco State University Poetry Center Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Kristina is active as a literary critic, with reviews and essays appearing in such magazines as The Gettysburg Review, The Boston Review, The Colorado Review, Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, and New Letters. Her critical projects have been supported by grants from the University of Missouri and the University at Buffalo, as well as a Riverrun Foun

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    634 views13 pages

    Women and Ghosts by Kristina Marie Darling Book Preview

    Uploaded by

    Geoffrey Gatza
    Why is there so much language, so many words I didn't want." Darling's collection interrogates a legacy of literary women that haunt our subconscious through paralleling a female narrator's mental strife alongside Shakespeare's tragic women: Ophelia, Juliet, Desdemona, Cleopatra, and more. Darling follows the trails of blood left on the page to explore violence done to women, both emotionally and physically. Through Darling's innovative forms, she's able to render the classical refreshingly new and chillingly devastating. Her writing, however, hits a more sensitive nerve: the terror of gendered violence and the chafing of powerlessness in womanhood, as her characters "cleave under the weight of my own dress." Yet, power is embedded in Darling's words, sharp and cutting as a razor blade: this is a collection all women should read. —Anne Champion, author of Reluctant Mistress and The Dark Length Home Women and Ghosts is a book for the brokenhearted: "Iced over with sadness," its speaker says (or doesn't), "I can no longer speak." In ghost text stricken from the record, she also says (or doesn't): "I wonder how someone else's life can seem so much my own." She means Desdemona's. Ophelia's. Juliet's. Cleopatra's. Lavinia's. But when I read these words, I think: not theirs, hers — I wonder how her life can seem so much my own. I love this book. I honor it. I cherish it. I lose myself in its tragedies, in the absences and silences of women's lives and I feel less desperate, less anxious, less alone. —Molly Gaudry, author of We Take Me Apart and Desire: A Haunting Kristina Marie Darling is the author of over twenty collections of poetry and hybrid prose, which include VOW, PETRARCHAN, and FAILURE LYRIC, forthcoming from BlazeVOX Books. Her writing has been described by literary critics as “haunting,” “mesmerizing,” and “complex.” Poet and Kenyon Review editor Zach Savich writes that her body of work is a “singularly graceful and stunningly incisive exploration of poetic insight, vision, and transformation.” Donald Revell writes of her SELECTED POEMS, “Here is a new tradition, alive in bright air.” Kristina’s books have also been reviewed widely in literary magazines, including The Boston Review, Ploughshares, The Colorado Review, The Columbia Poetry Review, Rain Taxi, The Mid-American Review, Pleiades, and The Southern Humanities Review. Within the past few years, her writing has been honored with a Yaddo residency, a Hawthornden Castle Fellowship, and a Visiting Artist Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome. She has also held artist-in-residence fellowships at the Ucross Foundation, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Hambidge Center for the Arts and Sciences, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, the Santa Fe Art Institute, and numerous other institutions. Kristina is the recipient of international literary arts fellowships from Le Moulin à Nef (VCCA France), the Tenòt Foundation (France), the B.A.U. Institute (Italy), and 360 Xochi Quetzal (Mexico), as well as grants from the Kittredge Fund, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation Archive Center. Her work has also been recognized with the Dan Liberthson Prize from the Academy of American Poets and nominations for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award, the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award, the San Francisco State University Poetry Center Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Kristina is active as a literary critic, with reviews and essays appearing in such magazines as The Gettysburg Review, The Boston Review, The Colorado Review, Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, and New Letters. Her critical projects have been supported by grants from the University of Missouri and the University at Buffalo, as well as a Riverrun Foun

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    of 13

    KRISTINA MARIE DARLING

    BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
    Buffalo, New York

    Women And Ghosts by Kristina Marie Darling


    Copyright 2015
    Published by BlazeVOX [books]
    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
    the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
    Printed in the United States of America
    Interior design, Cover Design and Typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza

    First Edition
    ISBN: 978-1-60964-219-8
    Library of Congress Control Number: 2015939196
    BlazeVOX [books]
    131 Euclid Ave
    Kenmore, NY 14217
    Editor@blazevox.org

    publisher of weird little books

    BlazeVOX [ books ]
    blazevox.org
    21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

    DAYLIGHT HAS ALREADY COME

    In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ophelia drowns under the weight of her own dress. I had
    never imagined before that plain white silk could kill.
    A year and a half ago, I put on my best clothes. I boarded Flight 2682 to nowhere,
    watched the clouds tremble and swoon.
    I arrived in the heat of the day and finally, he met me at my door. All I could do was
    stare. He looked me in the eyes and said, I'm so sorry.
    *
    That unmatched form and feature of blown youth
    Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh...
    When we first met, in a lush garden at the end of summer, I thought I would bear his
    children. First the bouquet, then crisp white linens, and eventually, little silver spoons.
    It is indeed expected that we accumulate these things. No one wants live in a strange
    house, opening and closing the same empty cabinet.
    A man is still standing with his hand against the doorframe. He clears his throat. He
    stutters.
    *
    And I, of ladies most deject and wretched....
    At first, I didn't quite understand the question. Define closeness. Define empty.
    When he smiled, I felt my whole body grow colder.
    *

    13

    The glass of fashion and the mould of form.... Blasted with ecstasy.
    If a man turns his head in such a way, who or what is shattered?
    In Hamlet, characters take knives to the heart, only to be survived by small fragments of
    their former selves: a courtier, a soldier, a scholar.
    We hear their footsteps in the corridor, never in unison. The floorboards swoon beneath
    the weight of their many feet.
    *
    Th' observed of all observers, quite, quite down...
    He would watch as I tried to make sense of train schedules. I wanted to be alone in the
    church, so that I could ask something of the marble statue, the milky-eyed saints.
    Even then, I searched for the right word. Alone with my thoughts, I felt as though I had
    fallen asleep in a strange bed.
    I looked out at the platform. It was always the same woman, boarding the same train.
    *
    When the chapel door closes, what will I be left with?
    The dress was too heavy for me to carry. I set it near the altar, folded in a perfect square.
    From the aisle, the window looked as though it had been repeatedly fractured. I wanted
    to finish the ceremony. I wanted so badly to leave.
    *
    Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state...
    In Hamlet, Ophelia loves without regard to her station. The daughter of Polonius, and

    14

    sister of Laertes, she is a young noblewoman reaching far above her magnificent,
    ornamented, fully submerged head.
    Throughout the play, many characters hint at the unsayable: a torn dress, an empty glass,
    the same bells ringing in the distance.
    But what does it mean to give one's consent? We are led and misled by those we love, an
    expectant white backdrop shuddering in the distance.
    *
    The courtiers, soldiers, scholars, eye, tongue, sword....
    After loss, we are survived by small fragments of our former selves. A neatly folded
    gown, a heap of dead lilies, a silver earring.
    In the film version of this story, Fortinbras, Horatio, and Osric are spared. We see in
    each them some of Hamlet's features: the dark blue eyes, a cheekbone, a freckle.
    What would it take to hold together the pieces? I undo the buttons on my dress. I pull
    back the sheets. I try my best to sleep.
    *
    What a noble mind is here o'erthrown...
    Was I the victim or wasn't I?
    On the very last night, he tried to tell me I was pretty. He opened a book I had read, but
    didn't understand. He read aloud from it.
    I felt myself getting drunker. He kept telling me, drink.
    That was when I looked out the window. I saw my crystal shot glass gleaming in his
    hand. He quietly set another in its place.
    The room grew colder and colder. I began gathering my things to go.

    15

    *
    What does it mean to give one's consent? Throughout Hamlet, Ophelia keeps
    misunderstanding the question.
    No more but so?
    Do you doubt that?
    I do not know, my lord, what I should think...

    We are led and misled by those we love, the same bells ringing in the distance. After loss,
    death, and madness, she wonders how the world can look so much the same.
    She enters stage left.
    She exits.
    *
    That sucked the honey of his music vows...
    If a man changes his mind, who will be sorry for you?
    I try to call home from the airport.
    But everyone there is so happy. My sister-in-law is finally pregnant.
    I feel my dress grow heavy. I think of a lake.
    *

    16

    T' have seen what I have seen, see what I see...


    I keep remembering the landscape, the way he seemed a part of it. The room still colder
    than it was before. The same bells ringing.
    I try to think about the weather.
    I board Flight 2682 to nowhere, watch the clouds as they tremble and swoon.

    17

    ESSAY ON FAILURE (I)

    I. OPHELIA
    do you doubt that no more but so I shall th' effect of this good lesson keep as
    watchman to my heart but good my brother 'tis in my memory lock'd and you
    yourself shall keep the key of it so please you, something touching the lord
    hamlet he hath, my lord of late made many tenders of his affection to me I do
    not know my lord, what I should think my lord he hath importun'd me with
    love in honourable fashion and hath given countenance to his speech my lord
    with almost all the holy vows of heaven I shall obey my lord o my lord my lord
    I have been so affrighted my lord as I was sewing in my closet lord hamlet with
    his doublet all unbrac'd my lord I do not know but truly I do fear it he took me
    by the wrist and held me hard then goes he to the length of all his arm no my
    good lord but as you did command I did repel his letters and denied madam I
    wish it may good my lord how does your honour for this many a day my lord I
    have remembrances of yours that I have longed long to re-deliver my honour'd
    lord you know right well you did and with them words of so sweet breath
    compos'd my lord what means your lordship could beauty my lord have better
    commerce than with honesty indeed my lord you made me believe so I was the
    more deceived at home my lord o help him you sweet heavens o heavenly
    powers restore him o what a noble mind is here o'erthrown the courtier's
    scholar's soldier's eye tongue sword th' expectancy and rose of the fair state the
    glass of fashion and the mould of form th' observ'd of all observers quite quite
    down and I of ladies most deject and wretched that suck'd the honey of his
    music vows now see that noble and most sovereign reason like sweet bells
    jangled out of tune and harsh that unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth
    blasted with ecstasy o, woe is me t' have seen what I have seen see what I see
    no my lord ay my lord I think nothing my lord what is my lord you are merry
    my lord ay my lord nay 'tis twice two months my lord what means this my lord
    belike this show imports the argument of the play will he tell us what this show
    meant you are naught you are naught I'll mark the play for us and for our
    tragedy 'tis brief my lord you are as good as a chorus my lord you are keen my
    lord you are keen still better and worse the king rises where is the beauteous
    majesty of Denmark how should I your true-love know say you nay pray you
    mark he is dead and gone lady white his shroud as the mountain snow larded all
    with sweet flowers well god did you they say the owl was a baker's daughter
    lord we know what we are but know not what we may be god be at pray let's
    have no words of this but when they ask you what it means say you this indeed
    la without an oath I'll make an end by saint charity I hope all will be well we
    must be patient but I cannot choose but weep to think they would lay him i' th'
    cold ground they bore him barefac'd on the bier you must sing 'a-down a-down
    and you call him o how the wheel becomes it it is the false steward that stole his
    there's rosemary that's for remembrance pray you love remember and there is
    pansies that's for thoughts there's fennel for you and columbines there's rue for
    you and here's some for me we may call it herb of grace o' sundays and will
    he not come again but as you did command I did repel his letters and denied

    21

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