David Dephy / Review
MEOWKU: poems by Patricia Carragon, Poets Wear Prada, 2019
ISBN-13: 978-1-946116-21-5, Paperback: 46 pages, List Price: $12.00
Catlike Poems. As I was reading Patricia Carragon’s poetry, "Meowku" (Poets Wear Prada, 2019) I was overcome with a peculiar feeling – as if I felt a warm nearness of a kitten while sensing its absolutely unmistakable alienation.
Plenty has been written and said about cats, but rarely anyone has managed to create poetry so catlike, and with such laconic ease. I was reading the book, thinking "do I love cats or not?" but whether I understand them or not does not have much importance now, as this book is beyond any stereotype and when we talk about cats and their universe, it’s hard not to remember T.S. Eliot, in whose writing every word feels like it’s been written specifically for you so that you can see and examine a unique world which you yearn to enter, while at the same time feeling some trepidation about entering it – as if something is stopping you. It’s the same feeling now with this book; I don’t mean just the intellectual and emotional union with Eliot’s work, but also the impulse of creativity and the simplest, yet most revealing forms of expression.
I believe every work is judged by how closely it reaches the original aim of the author and by the mastery with which it reaches its destination. I believe the aim is the reader’s heart, the heart of each human, no matter what age or sex they may be, whoever reads the text and feels some inexplicable, wonderful strangeness…a loving nearness of kittens.
These poems themselves are warm and mystical like kittens. They crawl from page to page with catlike grace as you caress them with your eyes and breath, as you stare them in the eye you become cautious like them and don’t want your silence to be disturbed by anyone while reading.
Today’s world is very much in the need of such poetry. The world that has lost serenity, hope and peacefulness. With virtuosic, masterful observation of alienation, love, trust and in general, of all that symbolizes life – and of course cat’s nature – Patricia Carragon creates and describes a mystical world that may be encountered in everyday life but hardly noticed by many.
What she has to say is wonderfully tempered, measured and precise. Here everything has its perfect place – each word, each sound and each punctuation mark. This book is a mystical union of words, sounds and...kittens, with which you will fall in love after the first read and which will become entirely yours, along with all its pictures.
This book is awaiting you. It will entrust its mysteries to you.
