Experiencing Mythology in Our Lives
An MER VOX Folio
Curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach
In her poem, “Sealskin, to her selkie,” KT Herr writes:
. . . . And who will teach us
to remember how to wake a body
to its home’s emphatic music?
The poems in this issue of VOX teach us how to remember an old, holy music in our homes, in ourselves. What a pleasure to explore the mythical and magical in the everyday: to find divinity, whether in the form of a classical god or a classical rock god, like Janis Joplin in Anne Graue’s “Piece of My Heart.” The poems impart an ancient history to all we touch. Hilary King’s “Joan of the Internet” weaves virtual threads, while Sarah Sousa recalls the Celtic Brigit’s mantle in “Prayer Shawl.”
These poems burn with language and imagery. In her homage, “On Mother’s Blue Hat,” Martha McCollough writes, we “lay our heads in her lap/we bad dogs dig up bones in the orchard set them on fire . . . .” Or, perhaps the fire is worship, as in Siân Killingsworth’s , “Inanna Speaks,”
my women still love
me, my red, my ardor
my hips and breasts.
The poems are righteous and magical and cast a spell of power: “These vigils are obsolete.” Jennifer Franklin writes, “Don’t tell me/where to place my candles.”
There’s an enormity to the poems as well, the size of humanity, encompassing life and death. The mundane task of ironing becomes the creation of Icrarus’s wings in Jane Poirier Hart’s “How to Iron a Shirt: Lessons for an Imagined Son.” Carol Berg’s “Origin Story: Breath,” asks “What our breath/contains—frescos, cathedrals, mountain/paths of green.”
We loved reading these fusions of the sacred and the profane. We hope you, too, feel the pull of these ancient stories. It is our pleasure and honor to present work from these poets:
Sarah Sousa
Martha McCollough
Jane Poirier Hart
KT Herr
Jennifer Franklin
Hilary King
Anne Graue
Carol Berg
Siân Killingsworth
–Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach