Life in Suspension

La Vie Suspendue

by Hélène Cardona

Winner of the Pinnacle Book Award for Best Bilingual

Poetry Book  and the Readers’ Favorite Award in Poetry

 

SAINT JULIAN PRESS

BOOK REVIEW

 

 

Life in Suspension, Hélène Cardona’s newest book of poetry, arises from an inner language learned through a sacred journey across the landscape of the human soul–psyche. It is an ancient story of animal archetypes, burning embers, holy ritual, and time remembered. Where we discover wisdom in nothingness embraced and light revealed, opening the self to infinite possibilities; the eternal.

 

Composed in two tongues, each verse travels across the firmament of heaven. The words intimately touch upon and engage the language of mystery and myth, as an Oracle and prophet. The poet, like Pythia, becomes a soothsayer, unveiling the hidden heavenly city. We move with her, towards another dominion and the transcendent power resting within the spirit. 

 

 

Ouranoupolis Pantoum

 

She came to me once in a dream

luminescent, clad in white, elated

so much younger than I ever knew her

thankful for my return to Chalkidiki.

 

Luminescent, clad in white, elated

for the first time since her abrupt departure

thankful for my return to Chalkidiki

where holy mountains stretch into sea.

 

For the first time since her abrupt departure

monasteries sculpted high on rocks lance skies and suns

where holy mountains stretch into sea

trident beckoning the Aegean.

 

Monasteries sculpted high on rocks lance skies and suns

direct line to God

trident beckoning the Aegean.

She embraced me with such love,

 

direct line to God

we were one.

She embraced me with such love,

pain or suffering never existed

 

we were one.

No resources wasted like bread in empty houses

where pain or suffering no longer exist.

Only bliss and she the flower Mage

 

no resources wasted like bread in empty houses

she makes me gardener of memories.

Only bliss and she the flower Mage

roses climbing back into my life

 

she makes me gardener of memories.

I wake with sheer joy

roses climbing back into my life

I too sea, sand, wind, and pine honey.

 

I wake with sheer joy

beams of love and innocence

I too sea, sand, wind, and pine honey

altered like a glimpse into now.

 

Beams of love and innocence

so much younger than I ever knew her

altered like a glimpse into now

she came to me once in a dream.

 

 

We travel with her through dreams and symbols that touch on our own hidden nature. Then, when the deepest memories awaken, the poet moves us back and forth between temporal and unending worlds. To a place she knows well, intuitively; where there is no beginning or end, no alpha or omega, only the MUSICA ETERNA humming within the spirit. Invoking a harmonic tone within the reader, as they experience her words.

 

 

Musica Eterna

 

Are we always more fascinated by the legend?

       What if myth meets you en el camino, healer

in the heart of compassion, peacemaker

 

smiling its message on piano keys, dusting

       the bookcase of life, whistling

follow your pen, be a song?

 

I blow wishes into the universe, celestial

       cape, matrix to subdue

demons and possess truth.

 

Surprised by my lunar earth nature,         

         inhabited by ancient forests,

I molt into flying serpents,

 

pelicans touching wings,

         magnets of expanded vistas,

a crest crowned by doves,

 

in its center the caduceus

entwined identity, magician’s score,

     water weeping out of hands.

 

 

In these verses from TIME REMEMBERED we encounter the memory of human awareness and consciousness. Our imaginations are drawn along, and we move towards a discernment, which we already know intimately. Each line is more than a question or a prayer. Through these poetic images, we open up to a remembrance. We encounter a revelation, the relationships and interrelatedness of life. The poet’s life and our own life, our lives joined, are revealed and entangled through the life we share. Our everyday reality arises from such a sharing; we are tangled together across time and the present.

 

 

Time Remembered

 

Do you remember

when you were wolf and I fawn

when you were a fly caught in my web

when you were snake and I bear

remember how we enchanted

each other through centuries

devoured one other

became the other?

Do you remember

when you were eagle and I jaguar

when we were two dolphins kissing

or cougars in the rain

so that now we can’t tell one

from the other, our cells imbedded

in a tapestry of shared lives?

 

 

In her poem EMBERS the poet’s use of images and language is tantalizing, reminiscent of what has been and will always be across the observed and unknown cosmos, mystery and creation. She encourages us to see what is often left unseen. Opening our eyes to a universe measured and forged; new equations waiting to be solved. Where we acquire wisdom and knowledge through the experience of living a spiritual life, becoming more aware of our place within creation.

 

 

EMBERS

 

We are made of stellar ash

                   — Carl Sagan

 

I conceive the last number,

then add one, so it never ends,

making extra space in the unsubstantial,

chimeric spectacle of dark matter.

 

I am copper in the labyrinth

where minerals and wolves breathe--

the ocean my wisdom—astounded,

mired in halos, a recondite sort of ray.

 

I map the mathematical universe, forge

equations into stellar winds—serrated

bamboo—cognizant of power laws, infinity

triggering bullets from the Cosmos.

 

 

Life in Suspension is an affirmation of life, a turning towards the memory and mystery of creation we find reflected in the arts. In the end, in its completion, these poems point the reader towards one end and one beginning, which are mirrored, always standing there before us. We only need to open our eyes, to read, and to see. Here is the inner self, the soul, with the mind fully open, waiting in great expectations, to experience an annunciation, an advent, and a nativity. Where we embrace a new creation tracing streams of light across the heavens and throughout the cosmos.  

 

Ron Starbuck

Saint Julian Press

Praise for
Life in Suspension

 

A bilingual collection in English and French

 

In this bilingual edition of her poems Hélène Cardona is our contemporary ecstatic, time-traveler, and shape-shifter. Behind the dreamlike atmosphere of her poems lies a fierce will to discover beauty, to resurrect ancient enchantments, and to defend enigmas of the spirit.  ‘I like transforming into an animal, / devouring who I was,’ she writes. Her luminous poems celebrate the imagination’s power to dignify and exalt our highest yearnings.

 

—Lee Upton, winner of a Pushcart Prize, the National Poetry Series Award, and two awards from the Poetry Society of America

 

 

Hélène Cardona is a poet, literary translator and actor, the recipient of numerous awards and honors including a Hemingway Grant and the USA Best Book Award. Her books include three poetry collections, most recently Life in Suspension (Salmon Poetry), and Dreaming My Animal Selves (Salmon Poetry); and three translations: Beyond Elsewhere (by Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac, White Pine Press), Ce que nous portons (by Dorianne Laux, Éditions du Cygne), and Walt Whitman's Civil War Writings for WhitmanWeb. Junimea Editions published a Romanian translation of Dreaming My Animal Selves in 2016. Hélène's work has also been translated into thirteen languages. She contributes essays to The London Magazine and co-edits Plume Journal and Fulcrum: An Anthology of Poetry and Aesthetics. She holds a Master's in American Literature from the Sorbonne, and taught at Hamilton College & Loyola Marymount University. 

 


Hélène Cardona
​
Life In Suspension 
from
Salmon Poetry
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