JANET I. BUCK

Spelling Crows of Winter, a review

As a reader, I am drawn to poetry that is simultaneously unsettling and beautiful
and capable of connecting the dots on our maps of both joy and grief. When I 
finish a book, I like to feel I know the rooms of darkness that make a poet’s heart
beat race. Michael Paul Ladanyi’s second poetry collection, Spelling Crows of Winter,
rises to this occasion and leaves us with line after line well worth reading again
and again. 

In his poem “Amid Hopeful Silence,” Ladanyi aptly ties the rattling season of autumn
to disturbing memories of 9/11 and our ensuing wars:

“September has fallen off the dusty 
shoulders of summer, bringing with 
it a stranger cloak of admonished rain, 
rumors of war, ghosts standing over
their bloody and colluded 
ruins outside coughing synagogues.”

Later in this stunning piece, he relates the “walls of this grieving room” to “small 
children peering from dim doorways of long halls.” One constant thread in his work
is that nature and ordinary facts of life have beating hearts to listen to. In short,
Ladanyi’s physical landscape and choice of imagery and metaphor blend 
effortlessly with the human condition. 

Jon Katz once wrote: “I got my Ph.D. in fate.” It strikes me that is the case for 
more than a few of our most powerful poetic voices today. Ladanyi is no exception.
Much of his poetry revolves around the shaky limbs of family trees and the wisdom
of suffering itself. It’s a rough way to grow compassion, but when it blooms 
on the page, you know the garden is real. 

Ladanyi is an expert at delivering the truths of a haunting past or the details of an 
abused childhood – yet he follows the purging of grief with the breath of hope 
often coming in the form of the presence of love and relationships. In “Humming
Riddles,” he calls words “purple bruises walking empty rooms” – then adroitly
turns to the vague but poignant comforts of amour: “You, my love, are white light
sparkling in my glass, a wet aching that comforts me.” Closeness itself is the
antidote for vacancy, though he’s wise enough to admit that existence is defined 
by the presence of riddle and despair.

When Ladanyi explores the grief of those he loves, he reminds me of Donald Hall,
who so expertly wrote of the loss of his wife, Jane Kenyon, in that recent
masterpiece The Painted Bed. When you close their books, you know
and feel the pain of another’s plight. He never simplifies the horror:

“What was unclear, surrendered, fallow, 
this morning when you woke with 
the thick taste of cheap brandy and 
menthol cigarettes in your mouth?
The sidewalk shifts beneath 

your feet in staggering patterns of blurry 
gray honeycombs. The thin sky 
hangs as blue as you’ve ever seen it,
the tomato sun seeming more 
of a trespasser than master of this house.”

This poem, entitled “Hollow,” captures the pit and landscape of another’s grief.
As a poet, Ladanyi sees admission as a road to sanity and an avenue of 
renaissance. He watches the emotional weather of those around him with a keen
eye for the gist of the storm. The honeycomb sidewalk is a beautiful image
that captures both the natural weavings of sadness and the sting of avid memory.
As a witness, he gives license to the grieving process itself.

In “Cold and Thick,” the poet admits his rage upon hearing about scandals involving
Catholic priests and the abused bodies of young boys. “The inside of me is dancing
crooked above this paper, sickly raging, as I remember that my mother named me 
after the first Michael.” The natural urge for accusation is tempered by the ownership
of what such despicable acts will do in staining childhood innocence. 

What appeals to me most about Spelling Crows of Winter is the fact that the poet
unafraid of subjects marked by controversy and horror. The terrible times in which we
live are laid bare and explored; resolution is not in the guise of simple answers; denial
is not in the poet’s vocabulary. Such candor reminds me of the poetry of Sharon Olds;
remarkably, Ladanyi’s delivery is never marked by bitterness and he still sees shades
of blue when he looks at the morning sky. 

---
The poet, Michael Paul Ladanyi.
http://www.geocities.com/michael_paul_ladanyi/index.html

copyright poet#03.11:131B