About the Poems - MA
About the Poems
by Molly Arden This work is part of my crusade to give voice to the insatiable, scrutable, obscure fem. It clouds, crosses lines, implies, lies, and disguises. The recognizable, physical poet concealed in the cut of a "P" on the page, the rub of nib against vellum. It is Jezebel marrying the minister, both wearing painted faces of coquettish quiet, while under dark robes donning silk and desire. The poems came in short bursts -- hard, and unnatural, and suspicious to a writer used to long revision and careful editing. The process -- periods of spurts and fallow -- created a desperate need for rigid form. In a tangle of slippery, masochistic, mysterious, anti-effeminate subjects, the longing for something staid and firm revealed itself in the virile rhyme, line length, and form. Spread throughout is, I hope, a feeling of membership for the reader. The reader's impetuous movement toward the vulgar, the ugly only tempts the poet to push the reader further down. Fair or unfair, what is necessary for the poem's success is derived solely from the writer. I concede that there is less grief in being foul than in being fair.