Songs
for Ophelia by Theodora Goss. A book review by Perle Champion.
To call
Theodora Goss’s book, Songs for Ophelia, a poetry book
would not do justice to the stories that lie beyond the gossamer illustration
gracing its cover. This is a collection
of hauntingly beautiful stories some new, some old retold – a storybook for
grownups.
The term
songs instead of poems suits this collection of prose stories. It puts one in mind of the bards of old, who
with lyre in hand, sang their tales. In Songs
for Ophelia, we accompany our own bard through enchanted realms,
traversing the wheel of the year in the ancient way season by season, song by
song. Strewn through this collection are
songs populated by names out of legend and myth whose stories we thought we
knew full well until we read Goss’s deft retelling. In her hands the stories are at once familiar
and not. She adds a depth as she explores
and exposes possibilities giving each character and place a richer more well-rounded
existence on the page
.
Reviewing
poetry is so very different from reviewing a novel, so I’ve chosen to give a
small glimpse of one poem from each season of Goss’s enchanted collection.
Spring: In The River’s
Daughter, the river morphs from like a father to father in this homage to
the death of a much admired writer. “She walks into the river/ with rocks in
her pockets, / and the water closes around her/ like the arms of a father…”
Summer: In By Tidal Pools, Goss gives new dimension to Circe affair with Odysseus. She elevates Circe from the flat stereotype
of Homer’s telling to a fully imagined woman with real yearnings. “At first she watched in case he should
return/ by tidal pools…Does he lie on some shore/ where snails leave glistening
tracks upon his eyes,/ or has he found his home?”
Autumn: In A Walk in Autumn, Summer becomes a maiden and slain. Although I prefer to raise a glass to
Persephone descending into hades, the imagery in this song is haunting. “Her name was Summer –
her hair the grasses/ her gown the forest’s leafy cloth… She lies unburied,
exposed to weather/ in tattered garments the worse for wear…”
Winter: And lastly, there is The Last Night That She Lived.
Who has not pondered these lines in some variation? “When soul from
form is rent,/ do streams run over stones/ in valleys of content?/ Or dust, on
bones?”
Ray Bradbury
once told me to read good poetry or an essay before turning out the lights at
night. He said he kept a good book or
two of poetry or essays by his bed and read from one or the other volume every
night. He said it turn the mind away from the noise and garbage of the day and
prepared the mind for dream.
Perle Champion
