Book Review in Rose & Thorn Mag

Many, many thanks to C L Toups for this wonderful review of Notes from Refuge in Rose & Thorn magazine:

http://roseandthornreviews.blogspot.com/2009/05/book-review-notes-from-refuge-by-lana.html

Signature Hamartia

Here in the common halls of substance,

labyrinth green with serenity and despair

mingled and anti-depressed numb. . .

it seems holocaustic madness is tolerable after all.

 

This is, after all, my dream.

Illusions I cooked up myself over a weak fire

and a circle of rare stones.

Twisting skeleton keys in academic doors

until the last on the left opened with surreal ease.

 

But ill-timing, my signature hamartia,

often places me at naturally rebellious front lines,

meandering on frowns of fortune

and downdraft swerves,

scraping elbows and knees in another occasion

to cheat the reaper’s fist by a nick

of something more consistent than time.

 

One never knows when a dream will turn on you.

Take you from ambrosial transcendence

to category 4 forces of will against yours

in a single rapid eye movement.

Dragging core and psyche to mortal boundaries

only to dump you at Hades gate in a box-truck,

holding a manual scripted in Coptic ideograms

and no compass to navigate home.

 

I cannot wake from this dream just yet—

because I no longer seep anger on the world

or myself for the lack of synchronicity between us,

and shifting at 46 mph with a drink in your hand,

a poem in your head

a storm on your back is difficult, even in dreams.

 

 ©2008 (copyright 2008 Plain View Press)

Zinta’s Review of Notes from Refuge

Thanks a million a million times over to Zinta Aistars of  The Smoking Poet for this glowing review of Notes from Refuge:

http://zintareviews.blogspot.com/2008/08/notes-from-refuge-by-lana-maht-wiggins.html

Cracker Jack Voodoo

In my mother’s New Orleans

of Buster Brown Bodegas

and nectar-soda café stools,

a Canal St. Saturday was a ticket to the good life.

 

Strolling the boulevard in pin-up pumps,

watching Cabrini-girls flip

ponytails and church-made skirts,

she slips into McCrory’s five and dime

for a heart-shaped bottle and a block of paraffin.

Her next stop is Woolworth’s for a sweet and 5 cent soda.

 

The Rampart corner is hopping-slick.

Zootsuit hawkers tappin’ and callin’

fine ladies and gents sifting tailor-made bargains.

Bugle-boys strutting Stacy Adams spats

and finely woven fedoras they’ll hock later to make rent.

 

Mama goes to Rampart for Cracker Jack Voodoo.

A chicken foot and some gris-gris oils.

One to keep evil out Sunday morning,

the other to keep it in Saturday night.

Old men calculate her formula in a red grimoire.

 

My mother bundles magic in a straw bag,

hops an Uptown streetcar

to shop windows beside Creole beauties

in pink-dot peplums and black pinwheels,

kid-glove fingers

and twenty-dollar handbags

 

In my New Orleans

of Gutter Girl Galleries

and hand-grenade street puke,

a Canal Saturday is freak surreality.

 

In black boot comfort

I watch Cabrini-girls trip

in Manolo heels over purple beads

and NOPD horse-shit at Razoo.

 

Foamy frat boys grabbin’ and howlin’

Strutting Abercrombie and Phat Farm,

Bugle-boys struggling to pull in a dollar

for A&P’s 32 special.

Creole beauties shoplift iPods

from broken windows and 5 cents

in your pocket

buys a sweet ticket to jail.

 

I get my Voodoo in Jackson Square.

A chicken foot and some gris-gris oils.

 

The Square corner is a Cracker Jack knock-off.

Rampart is a parking lot now.

 

Since commiserating company is somewhat under-rated,

we take our loan from the graces,

my mother and I.

She with lace covered hair,

kneeling solemnly on a prie-dieu,

posturing piety for laconic virgins shrouded.

 

I feign bravado with black shawl shoulders

in throes of plaintive tribulation.

 

Despite our differences,

cloaked in esoteric sublime,

my body is my mother’s.

 

 

©2008  (copyright 2008 Plain View Press)

Hello

Photo by Lauren Dore (Rock This Life Photography)

My name is Lana Maht Wiggins and I am a poet/writer/mother/teacher and born-n-bred Cajun girl. I am the author of  Notes from Refuge (Plain View Press 2008) which is my first full-length book of poetry. The poems in NFR chronicle my existence as a refugee from NOLA and also my existence upon returning to a battered and bruised city 4 months later. New Orleans was my mother’s city and I grew up listening to her stories about NOLA and could not wait to move there in the summer of 2005 for a teaching position at UNO. That summer of 2005 was full of adventure, drama, intrigue, and poetry . . . it was the best time of my life and I fell immediately and irrevocably in love with New Orleans. There was never a dull moment in the French Quarter and although I was lonely for my home people in Lafayette, I met some of the most interesting and quirky characters a writer can only dream of . . . there was Sasha, my beautiful Russian, a gypsy artist who could break my heart and mend it simultanously just by watching him create. Gina, who knew every single scar on your soul and revealed them to no one but you at the riverwalk on a full moon. Sam, the clown who loved me and followed me home just to make sure I made it safely and never asked for anything but respect. Crystal, the lady-man who knew exact history of our block all the way back to the Kennedy Era. The Incomparable Lord Chaz, the premier tour guide of Vampire Street Theatre–one evening with Lord Chaz and his pal, devil-cherub and oh-soooo sexy, Micah, and your life will be changed forever. Lord Chaz is the finest mystery NOLA has to offer . . . but as life and luck spins around the great wheel of fortune and the winds blow in as they did on August 29, 2005, all that beautiful magic of NOLA came crashing in upon us  and a new, unrecognizable existence set in.

I spent  4 months as a refugee. Barred, blocked, deleted and denied from my home and all of my belongings. But I was lucky– I had family and friends who came to my rescue. Cajun people are like that . . . we turn out in droves to help family and friends in crises.  I also had a good job waiting for me, so when NOLA’s gates opened up, I was one of the first to come back home and spent the next two years trying to adjust to holocaustic madness. It was a nightmare. The city was damaged beyond recognition, almost beyond function. Sure, the French Quarter made out okay, but there’s so much more to the city than the Quarter. Imagine driving inner city–and NOLA has a BIG inner city area–on buckled streets and no working signal lights, 4 way stops  at every corner and very angry, very confused drivers flipping off everybody else with both fingers. Imagine doing this for 2 hrs . . .  stop, go, stop, go, all the while staring in disbelief at the roofline watermarks and collapsed homes, dreams, futures, fortunes . . . pyramids of debris, garbage, garbage, garbge and no one to pick it up, and all this just to get to one of the few grocery stores in operation only to find they’ve run out of everything on your list, so you either settle for what’s there or drive–stop, go, stop, go, endure the flip-offs, and stare again in horror at the unequivocal and unending blend of horrors until you get to the next store and find half of what you wanted . . .

Well, this scenario got a little better after about six months or so, but as more and more people came back to NOLA, so did the violence. Imagine locking yourself in the bedroom every night with a knife under your mattress, trying to sleep with your neck cocked in that awkward position that allows you to listen for the possibility of breaking glass, footsteps in your house because 3 people on your block were hit that month. Imagine waking nearly every night at 4:00 am to hear gunshots popping like a string of black cat firecrackers throughout your ward, sirens, sirens, sirens coming from all directions at once, drowning out the poem you’re trying to write in your head, and you don’t dare look out the window or move an inch or exhale until it all fades into sunrise . . .

To be honest, I spent hours and hours on end, holed up in my house on Grand Route St. John, leaving for work,  necessary shopping, and the occasional stroll through the Quarter with visiting friends. Most of my time was spent writing poetry and waiting . . . waiting for someone to come in and fix the city, set it right, make the bullets stop flying, make the mold disappear, make the people happy again.  I stayed until the thought of another summer in the city with temperatures spiking into the 100’s and tempers rising along with it made me physically ill and I knew I had to leave. I had to come home . . . I love NOLA and the people there, but I could no longer exist in the broken world of post-Katrina New Orleans . . . so I came home. After 2 months back in Lafayette, I got my dream job teaching at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, and I don’t think I’ll ever leave here again.

It was indeed a very difficult experience, but I was able to finish  my book and I’m really happy with the results. Shortly after the book was accepted for publication by Plain View Press in Austin, TX, I was contacted by a French author who’d read one of my poems online. Monsieur S. invited me to be the guest poet at the annual International Writer’s Conference held in Paris in 2008, and my dear friend also arranged for me to launch the book at a very hip English/French bookstore in the Latin District, The Abbey Bookstore, the afternoon before the conference. This was the experience of a lifetime! I got to launch my little book in Paris! Monsieur S. also hosted a lovely party for me after the reading at the Abbey in his home in Les Lilas with prominent writers from France, Italy, England, and Canada. The conference was amazing with international writers such as Alexandra Dekimpe, Melanie Fazi, Céline Guillaume, Fabienne Leloup, Dominique Lesbros, Malaïka, Martine Mangeon, Marie Ange Prétot, Emmanuelle Maia, Barbara Sadoul, Miguel Angel Arellano, Pierre Brulhet, Lucas Balbo, Jean Marie Beurk, Olivier Bidchiren,Robert de Laroche, Arnaud de l’Estoile, Patrick Eudéline, Antoine Faivre, Sylvain Ferrieu, Franck Ferric, Jacques Goimard, Frank Guilbert, Massimo Izzi, William Hugues, Robert de Laroche, Gérard Lopez, Jean Marigny, Hana Myo Shin, François Poublanc, Alain Pozzuoli, Marc Louis Questin, Michel Rozenberg, Jacques Sirgent, Nicolas Stanzick and a concert by Heavenly Creatures featuring harpist Morgane Chavaneau.

I truly felt as if I landed in a dream . . . I went from the war zone of post-K NOLA to Paris in a blink of an eye and I’m still reeling from it all . . .