Tea at Trianon: Poetess Kateri Lanthier in New York City

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Poetess Kateri Lanthier in New York City

From Brick Books:

Kateri Lanthier’s work has been among my favorite recent “discoveries”. For one thing, it is encouraging to know I’m not alone in having “gone underground” and hibernating, hopefully to “re-emerge” in time. The surfaces of her work reveal a long period of preparation that has gone unnoticed by us, outside observers. Indeed, it is rare for me to find so many points of commonality that are everywhere apparent.

Having bemoaned the absence of musicality in contemporary poetry, if Lanthier is any indication, we have come round full circle back to lyricism and song again. First and foremost Lanthier for me is a poet of vowels. “…Crockery smashed/ by scullery maids/ and washed, washed,/ washed to the bone.” And a little later: “Our stroller did the boardwalk wobble./ Dazed on the sand,/ daylight stargazers felt the slow burn.” (From “Beached” in her first collection Reporting from Night; Iguana Books, 2011).

Yes, I know the consonances (the modulation of their alliteration) is handled deftly as well, but it is the pleasure of the babbling brook of low vowels, their alternating pitches filling differently the mouth, that is the mark of a master craftswoman. Granted, I’m merely offering a snatch of one of the first poems in the book; he didn’t bother reading the rest, you will say. But you are mistaken: I did, and could offer a similarly impressive performance from practically each of Kateri’s poems, wishing to return to read them again and again.

There is so much sonic energy here, and the other tools Pound spoke of, phanopoeia and logopoeia, image and wit. Moreover, what I admire in her work, desiring so much to fulfill it in my own, is a quirky playfulness that is yet not divorced of sense. She is one of a growing handful of the younger generation of poets now coming into their own. I truly look forward to seeing what Kateri does next.

To learn more about Kateri, please visit Iguana Books website. Her second collection is coming out with Signal Editions Poetry (Véhicule Press) in spring 2017.

Kateri is one of the readers from The Best Canadian Poetry in English in New York City on Wednesday, June 24 at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street. (Read more.)