The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead

Dark Ladies & Other Avatars: Poems by Joan Roberta Ryan- Review by Devon Balwit

7/27/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Click on cover to view or purchase on Amazon.

Dark Ladies & Other Avatars: Poems by Joan Roberta Ryan
3: A Taos Press, Denver CO, 2017, 97 pages, $24

The child of a painter and a photographer, I grew up in art museums and art galleries. I learned about the secrets of the body from crafted nudes, both two-and three-dimensional. An only child, I used to spend hours telling myself stories about the color plates in the art books on our shelves and as I drew my own. In her collection, Dark Ladies & Other Avatars, Joan Roberta Ryan reveals a similar sensibility.

The first section of her book is dedicated to ekphrastic work, explorations of Cranach, Titian, DaVinci, Caravaggio, De Hooch, and De La Tour. Ryan deftly weaves research with attentive looking in her treatments of these paintings. This section allows her the most reach with her rich vocabulary. Children “nimble” their way. Weavers don’t just used coloured thread, but strands of “Tyrian purple, / crimson kermes, blue woad, saffron, madder.” Abandoned wives cook “lamb printanier and blanquette de veau.” Some poems, like "Viola Revisited" and "Links to Lena" come with their own lists of words down the left-hand margin, in the former, seemingly a gloss on each line (abstemious / prig / elusive / aberrant) and in the latter a prompt for each stanza (rose of Sharon / gamine / inklings). In this section, along with mythical women, religious and secular, Ryan depicts artists and their models, and the wives of better-known characters, such as Rip Van Winkel and Prince Charming. Her female figures reveal complexities of ambition and desire.

The second section moves into darker territory, and yet for all that, remains buoyant. Ryan’s poems explore mental illness and physical decline. In the poem "To the Voices," the speaker asks, “Who are you—and why do you haunt / my sister, forbidding her to walk through the park / on Sunday, eat red berries or repeat what you say?” In the poem "My Father’s Hands," about a father stricken with Guillain-Barré, the speaker observes hands “suddenly as blind to touch as if / encased in leather mitts, indifferent / to command as a dozing cat, hitting / too hard, too slow—bereft of feel.” In Pentimento, she describes how her elderly mother, stricken with dementia, is losing her words: “larkspur, columbine, asters, / foxgloves, all withered to lovely flowers—” These poems trace our inheritance from family members—memories, keepsakes (many of questionable provenance), physical qualities like hair colour, and even ashes. The relationships that Ryan documents are complicated but serve, somewhat guilt-inducingly, as fuel for her work. 

“To whom,” she asks in "Close Kept," “would I reveal / her secrets, dear reader, but you?”

The final section brings us closer to the poetic speaker herself—her relationship to her body, her sexuality, the landscape within which she moves, and her family—husband, children, and grandchildren. These poems are suffused with sensuality, as in "Barcelona," where the Cava-tipsy focus of the poem “blushed her way / back from the damas and / handed him under the table / a small damp ball / of black silk.” In "Past Meridian," she describes the transition of youthful desire to an older flame: “every oenophile knows, / raisins make a fine rich wine.”

In short, spending time with Ryan’s work is like luxuriating on a bench before a beloved canvas, pouring over a treasured photo-album, or like being a guest in someone else’s well-appointed home. You continue your day glad to be human.

​Devon Balwit

​Devon Balwit sets her hand to the plough in the Pacific Northwest. Her poems and reviews can be found here in The Ekphrastic Review as well as in The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Rattle, Apt (long form issue), Tar River Poetry, Sugar House Review, Poetry South, saltfront, and Grist among others. Please visit her website at: https://pelapdx.wixsite.com/devonbalwitpoet
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    COOKIES/PRIVACY
    This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you.
    Join us on Facebook:
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic theekphrasticreview@gmail.com 

  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead