Sometimes, when a poet handles difficult issues through poetry, he or she slaps the reader in the face with a wakeup call. Many readers will find it hard to really get into a poetry collection if the first poem serves to put up a wall, or if the poem is purposely difficult. In his chapbook, Spelling Crows of Winter, Michael Paul Ladanyi does what every good poet knows to do when organizing a collection: he provides a welcoming threshold. The threshold of a poetry collection draws you in, makes you feel safe at home on a cold and blustery night. In this case, the threshold also serves to give you clues as to the darker forces that lie waiting further within the chapbook.
Ladanyi's first poem in the book, "Folded Paper and Teal Water," really sets the mood:
I have been told that there is a dance
long and sweet, hollow with blues
and greens, folded paper
vibrations that forever weep with
smiles and laughing hazel eyes.
Do you know of it?...
Ladanyi's collection is itself a dance. While the dance may be "long and sweet," the hollow blues and greens are introduced in the painful emotions of a life haunted by ghosts and the past. The welcoming threshold doesn't last long as the reader is quickly pulled into an emotional miasma by the poem "Fourteen," which examines the trauma of a child recognizing for the first time how little control one has over the world around and the people you love:
he laid there for three days,
his sister wondering if he were dead,
thinking him dead, finally believing
him dead, before asking herself if
the police would question her upon
finding the body.
Many of Ladanyi's poems are connected by the theme of innocence lost. The women addressed in many of these poems (perhaps one woman) were the victims of abuse, and these harrowing poems feel deeply personal. Ladanyi skillfully puts to words the aftermath of the trauma, in a voice that is as intimate as a conversation between old friends. In "Red Cotton," the poet speaks to a woman abused as a child:
I did not know then that invisible blood littered
your trembling thighs like red cotton,
muffling scream and tears; I did not
know horrid whispers of, "keep your
mouth shut or else" strangled your
small ears until they choked, bled
The natural world plays a significant role in Ladanyi's work, but primarily to add a darker or more sinister layer of meaning. Winter nights are
like death unhinged, silently gathering
small treasures to bury in pale
places we would never think to look
Bone-thatched trees seem to choke on night like children / that have drank sugar water for days. The crows of the title poem settle here on slim legs / of squawking sorrows. Even the abused women's surroundings provide an added emphasis to their sufferings, as in "Her Sky":
She
stared at garbage cans
filled with yesterday's
coffee, old clothing,
tabloids covered with
spaghetti sauce, telling
herself she was somewhere
else, said this to the small
rectangle of pale blue
streaked with white
atop three cold walls
of chipped alley-stone
above her
One of the most interesting things I noticed about this collection was the obvious repetition of the color yellow throughout many of the poems. Ladanyi describes the glow of a car's lights in the rain as yellow cold. In the poem "Dying of Day," Late November's severely thin / sky is yellow. In "Global Stages," the poet stares at the yellow sky, thinking that all the / true artists have died or now refuse to paint. A haunted woman sees through dreams in bloated yellow pauses. We see yellow-white candle light ... October's yellow-peach light of dusk ... and weary paper yellowed by time / and forgotten words.
These recurrences remind me of the yellow roses that appeared several times throughout Michael Cunningham's The Hours. It is fitting that the color is dappled about by Ladanyi since yellow is the color associated with fear and illness, but most notably is the color bruises turn as the body heals its wounds. Many of Ladanyi's poems in this collection center on bruised people and both the physical and emotional healing processes.
The only fault I might be able to find among these very thought-provoking and socially-conscious poems has to do with the line enjambments in some of the works. By enjambments, I mean Ladanyi's choice of words emphasized by their placement at the end of a line. In most poetry, lines are broken with attention to natural pauses if a poet is concerned with "flow," or lines are broken to purposely set a specific pace. Short lines can serve to heighten the anxiety of a poem. Unfortunately, in a few poems in this collection, the line breaks don't seem to serve a purpose, are awkward, or seem to emphasize meaningless words like the, from, and to.
Throughout this collection, I was constantly impressed by Ladanyi's sometimes cautious, sometimes blunt treatment of a socially-sensitive subject, giving his readers a sample of the breadth of his talents. I look forward to seeing more of Ladanyi's work in the future, and hope that he continues to explore the engaging world of human frailties and strengths through his poetry.
