night thoughts

August 26, 2013
This raw and affecting third collection from Arvio (Sono: Cantos) is really two brief books in one. First, unrhymed sonnets in plain yet vivid language describe a series of Arvio’s dreams; second, the poet recalls the childhood troubles that she came to understand through psychoanalysis, in prose that annotates the sonnets but reads like a journal. The sonnets combine the immediacy of memory with the insistent symbolism of dreams; in one “I’m sloughing something but what I don’t know/ out of the sea dream out of the deep self.” Blood, blades, snakes, beds, and other totemic items invite us to interpret, as Arvio later does: “a black slip with a lace decolletage” becomes “the black slip in which I’ll die.” These sonnets give up more of their secrets in the prose, where many clues point back to sexual trauma that neighborhood boys inflicted on the poet before her teens. At one point in the analysis came “the first time I had the sense that there was more to know about my suffering and that I might be able to find it.” Some readers may find themselves put off by the conventions of psychoanalytic interpretation; others may read Arvio’ s serious discoveries for insight both into the poet, and into themselves.

March 15, 2013

This book contains 70 contemporary sonnets along with lengthy explanatory notes and an index of figurative language. The poems shouldn't be read without the notes; these language poems don't resonate without the context provided by the rest of the book. Nor are they pieces one can dip into at will. Rome Prize-winner Arvio (Sono) rightfully describes the collection as an exploration of the dreaming mind, a memoir, and a poetic record of her experiences under psychoanalysis. The poems exemplify the striking verbal effects that occur with enjambment and wordplay. This is poetry made from running sentences into each other and putting words that sound alike together--without punctuation. Arvio rubs words against each other as though they were sticks under a magnifying glass positioned to catch the heat of the sun. VERDICT When the sticks do ignite, they burst into sparks, fire, and smoke, yielding a galvanizing energy. Like the dreams these vivid poems are meant to evoke, their meaning is not so much in the dream as in the dreamer.--Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD

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