For poets who take their inspiration from well-known figures in the worlds of art, literature and history for inspiration, the biggest challenge is to “make it new.” But Mary Alexandra Agner, in her chapbook The Doors of the Body, does find new approaches to her subjects that allow readers a fresh perspective on these old stories.
Many of the 22 poems in Agner’s collection are persona poems, allowing readers her take on what these well-known subjects – Penelope, Mercedes, Sleeping Beauty – may have done or thought outside of what literary constraints they had been born under. For instance, in “Minerva,” Agner has this daughter born out of Jupiter’s head (in Greek mythology, it was Athena sprung from Zeus’ head) speak to him as a grown woman:
Father, you never asked if I had longings
exceeding your narrow-minded need for power.
Indeed, you never knew that I was more than
another arm until you sought persuasion—
the kind that women work—as part of warring.
Where I think Agner’s strength lies is in her imaginative treatment of the unexpected subjects – Clementine, Gretel (as in Hansel and…), and Queen Tomyris. My favorite poem in the book is the subversive and complex persona poem “Sweets,” in the voice of Gretel, years after the experience at the witch’s house in the woods:
Sweets still have their special taste:
gasoline, sometimes chalk. Vidalias
can get to be too much in allium season.
Still arguing, the children knock
and enter. Quite soon, their parents
will leave them here, alone with me,
the way my husband never let them be.
In my hunger, my lifetime abstinence,
I have long understood the frosting of deceit,
the ease with which one can believe
anything of gumdrops.
Whether inventing new myths or reinventing old ones, Agner’s poems delight as they explore rugged emotional landscapes.
29pp.
This is Agner's first book.
