Arias

October 15, 2019
If a book of poetry can unsimplify?can add tangles, grit, and tangents to the way we think and feel?Arias is that book. Following Olds' brilliant Odes (2016), the titular central section here, "Arias," is a series of poems with titles representing each letter of the alphabet and that features wide-ranging themes. "Breaking Bad Aria" uses the TV show to explicate gendered approaches to risk, while "Kunitzeiform Aria" pays intimate tribute to Olds' friendship with the late poet laureate Stanley Kunitz. The powerful section "Run Away Up," examines Olds' childhood and her mother, who gifted her with "the / beatings and the music" that Olds repurposes, sometimes literally, as in "On Truth Serum, Seventy Years Ago, My Mother Chats," in which a beating is described from the mother's point of view with chilling logic. Other children, Trayvon Martin, Etan Patz, Olds' own firstborn, are introduced in the book to bring the immensity of the world's hurt to an intimate human level, not to simplify it but to both concentrate it and to find its odd joys. Arias offers hard-earned comfort well worth the effort.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)