VIRGINALS by LARISSA SZPORLUK

Reading by Aloysiusi Polintan

Virginals by Larissa Szporluk

(Burnside Press, 2021)

Flash Book Review No. 237: Virginals is the third Larissa Szporluk book I've read, and now I can say that her varying style for a certain theme—the influence of myths on the way we think about grief, alienation, violence, and masochism—is worthy of emulation, given I'm a hope-filled poet still experimenting with his voice. "You used to be a nurse, / now you are a fish." See the directness, see the limpidity of her lines! The poems I very much love in this collection, published in 2021 by Burnside Press, are the ones that are straightforwardly instructive, yet we know these are only gentle, innocuous invitations from a sharp, attentive mind, whose experiences of pain after pleasure, of guilt after violation, give way for our reckoning: 

 

Open your tumor 

to make yourself see 

yourself 

messiah-hyena 

wasting away"

 

Filled with stanzas capable of suspending hasty reading, Virginals is teaching me to pause after every poem, heave a sigh of confusion and resignation, and proceed with my own search for clarity and connection, until my cupboard of images and metaphoric possibilities exhausts itself. 

 

We can't really see them, 

naked, burning, 

 

below and behind 

the crumbling altar

 

—these lines very well capture how Szporluk looks at her poems: secretive, promising, yet willing to be discovered, dismantled, shimmering. Pieces from the second-person point of view are not the only ones that matter here, for self-unraveling is part and parcel of the poet's amazing feat. And this confession—though we aren't totally sure if this is really a confession—does not shy away from inclusivity's call. The "we" she mostly talked about could be herself and her object of desire, or it could be us, the mystified collective, eager to transcend in/from different directions. 

 

We change the spell

 to suit what comes 

 

instead of what we covet.

 

Such truths on life and the body, rendered brilliant with short lines and appearances of foreign, unexpected images, only promise one thing: suppositions, as ephemeral as they are, bring comfort, acceptance of their prevalence brings liberation.

*****

Since 2016, Aloysiusi Polintan has worked as a Senior High School Principal in Divina Pastora College. He started scribbling poems and essays when he was 17 years old. These poems are still kept in a notebook and wait to be revised for future publication. This notebook will be revived and will give birth to language already "lived." That is why his blog is named "Renaissance of a Notebook," a blog of poems, personal and academic essays, and flash movie reviews. His book reviews, which are published and featured in The Halo-Halo Review and Galatea Resurrects, are also to be found on the blog, under the series title "Mesmerized." He believes that the ability to judge or critique a literary piece starts with the reader's being moved and mesmerized by the artful arrangement of words articulating some longing for freedom and individuality. He's now working on a manuscript of 50 poems, with a working title of Brittle Sounds.