A Review of "Creature" by Marsha de la O

 

Ventura, California-based poet Marsha de la O knows of fire, force of destruction and engine of rebirth. Consider the poem “The Afterlife of Flames,” from her intensely engaging (or perhaps that should be engagingly intense) new volume Creature, in which she writes: “there’s / no need to abide any longer, / no need for the abode, the / hut, the hull, the home, only / translation is required.” This is serious music, words tumbling like dice hoping to land lucky or right. Or perhaps it’s the very song of their fall to the troubled table of our world that matters. Fortunately for us, de la O is the keenest of translators, her book a bridge bringing us the world’s wordless but no less felt pain and beauty full force. 

 Even the note for “The Afterlife of Flames” at the back of the book is a prose poem; de la O, a lecturer in English at Cal State Channel Islands and indomitable arts advocate, writes that the poem “refers to the California fire poppy, which grows after a major burn. Its seeds can lie dormant for decades. They bloom for only one day.”

Care to read the rest then do at California Review of Books.