{"id":2526,"date":"2018-01-02T21:57:38","date_gmt":"2018-01-02T21:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&p=2526"},"modified":"2018-01-02T21:57:38","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T21:57:38","slug":"language-as-remembrance-witness-companion","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/language-as-remembrance-witness-companion\/","title":{"rendered":"Language as Remembrance, Witness, Companion"},"content":{"rendered":"

In June the Labyrinth<\/em>, by Cynthia Hogue
\nRed Hen Press, 2017
\n76 pages, paper, $17.95<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cynthia Hogue\u2019s latest collection from Red Hen Press unfolds around a journey to the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral undertaken as an elegiac pilgrimage. On this journey, Hogue maps a poetic space connecting grief and immortality, presence and immanence, love and loss. These connections demonstrate the power of language as remembrance, witness, and, ultimately, companion.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In June the Labyrinth<\/em> begins following the death of Hogue\u2019s mother and is dedicated to four of the poet\u2019s friends who died in the subsequent two years of the book\u2019s writing. As the poet begins the journey through the cathedral labyrinth, she transports the reader to an inner labyrinth of voices:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The difference between finding a way<\/p>\n

and finding the way<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

is like that between not knowing<\/p>\n

and having forgotten.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The spiraling movement of the labyrinth walk is layered with voices, primarily those of the I-speaker and the figure of the dying Elle, a strong female presence determinedly writing her \u201cbook of wisdom\u201d until \u201cshe cannot hold her pen.\u201d When Elle calls and a demon answers, Elle knows she is on her own:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is the crux of her belief:<\/p>\n

No one here to fall<\/p>\n

back on but herself, she the wild,<\/p>\n

and true blue, the only starry night.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Elle walks the labyrinth \u201cmeekly above ground \/ (there is a clearing in her heart).\u00a0\u00a0 A crunching sound \/ like wheels on gravel, a whirring \/ as of flight. A lifetime\u2019s surrender.\u201d The I-speaker, on the other hand, walks the labyrinth casting intuitive petals in the four cardinal directions as if to ward off the inevitability of Elle\u2019s death. In the face of this loss, the speaker\u2019s ritual creates poetically an opening of time into a space layered and timeless where self and other arrive as companions already loved, a place of healing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With a generosity of spirit, an imaginative embodying of others within a self, and an inclusive carrying of lost beloveds within the human heart, Hogue\u2019s poems demonstrate how language may transmute the experience of grief as habitation; they evidence the way a poem may become a form of visitation, embodiment, and possession which C. D. Wright called being \u201cone with others.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hogue\u2019s honed and spare language embraces innovative play with words misread, crossed out, called out, and sounded, giving the collection a vibrant texture. The poem \u201c(\u201cdehors<\/em> et dedans<\/em>\u201d),\u201d for example, begins with a fruitful misreading and then carves words out of themselves, a creative strategy that suggests, in this context, how \u201creal\u201d life remains \u201csliced from unreal\u201d even as \u201clife\u2019s excluding\u201d Elle and the speaker \u201ccannot harbor \/ her.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Outside is<\/em> inside,<\/p>\n

I misread Bachelard\u2019s French<\/p>\n

imagining Elle belonging when<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

life\u2019s excluding her.<\/p>\n

She will message me,<\/p>\n

I think. But I cannot harbor<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

her. She is inside herself,<\/p>\n

sliced from unreal, real<\/em>,<\/p>\n

as no<\/em> from not<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A hope in the face of devastating loss is that Elle will \u201cmessage me, I think.\u201d The message is not a sure thing, yet if the speaker puts her mind to it, if she can imagine it, she may hear it. The power of memory and imagination connects the living and the dead. Embodied through Hogue\u2019s language, it becomes a witness to the emotional and spiritual complexity of the grieving process:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

being close enough to touch<\/p>\n

differed from her distant love,<\/p>\n

safely abstracted from presence.<\/p>\n

Elle\u2019s goodness found in her forgiveness.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hogue achieves the flow and syncopation of the book\u2019s startling music through her finesse with line, space, punctuation, and variations of form from tercets, quatrains, sestets and septets, to a hyphenated list, field composition, and prose. A subtle chiming rings through the book\u2019s outer and inner worlds, which connect through sound and Hogue\u2019s own aliveness as a poet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One feels her urgency in seeking to understand and to reckon with the power of loss and death, particularly a daughter\u2019s loss of her mother. Elle becomes the speaker\u2019s familiar, an inner witness on the journey through a life learning to accept death through forgiveness:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Forgiveness is a labyrinth, a way,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

going in this direction and not that,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

the ethical route and heart\u2019s root,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

the core<\/em>, of course, riddle of how<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

to cure the poison of the demon,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

that bitterness which<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

bent her like a bell<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

until at last she sounded<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

sound<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cynthia Hogue\u2019s In June the Labyrinth<\/em> is a stunning and unforgettable book. It is a letting in of grief rather than a letting go. Hogue\u2019s poems demonstrate how one does not recover but rather uncovers and discovers truths about the other\u2019s being in relation to oneself. Ultimately, these truths come to rest in language itself, in the poem embodied as a form of conscious companion.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cynthia Hogue maps a poetic space connecting grief and immortality…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2528,"template":"","categories":[9,139],"tags":[6,471,472,473,474,475,203,476,477,332,478],"class_list":["post-2526","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-book-review","tag-aquifer-the-florida-review-online","tag-c-d-wright","tag-chartres-cathedral","tag-cynthia-hogue","tag-death","tag-gaston-bachelard","tag-grief","tag-heather-h-thomas","tag-in-june-the-labyrinth","tag-loss","tag-poetic-language"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLanguage as Remembrance, Witness, Companion - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/language-as-remembrance-witness-companion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Language as Remembrance, Witness, Companion - 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