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Ange Mlinko alchemizes art and life into a dazzling collection of poetry in Venice
In Venice, Ange Mlinko dissolves the boundaries between the sublime and the ordinary, the mythic and the rational, the past and the present. She sees a Roman tablet, scratched with Greek script, in the waxen wings of a bouffant bee, and she thinks of the abyss between two airport terminals when considering Rodin's “Gates of Hell.” From Naples, Italy, to its sister city on the Gulf of Mexico, or at home, in the glow of a computer screen (“I worry / that Zoom is ruled by djinn / that filter out the wavelength of love / and so I wear my evil eye jewelry / as you advised, against being too/much in view ...”), Mlinko probes the etymologies and eccentricities of all she encounters.
On her travels, Mlinko scrapes at the patina of the past and considers the line between destruction and preservation. Sparking with wit and intelligence, the poet's own lines break down and remake language, myth, and time. Mlinko is a poet of art and of life, and Venice is a sumptuous exploration of poetry's capacity to capture the miracles and ironies of our times.
In Venice, Ange Mlinko dissolves the boundaries between the sublime and the ordinary, the mythic and the rational, the past and the present. She sees a Roman tablet, scratched with Greek script, in the waxen wings of a bouffant bee, and she thinks of the abyss between two airport terminals when considering Rodin's “Gates of Hell.” From Naples, Italy, to its sister city on the Gulf of Mexico, or at home, in the glow of a computer screen (“I worry / that Zoom is ruled by djinn / that filter out the wavelength of love / and so I wear my evil eye jewelry / as you advised, against being too/much in view ...”), Mlinko probes the etymologies and eccentricities of all she encounters.
On her travels, Mlinko scrapes at the patina of the past and considers the line between destruction and preservation. Sparking with wit and intelligence, the poet's own lines break down and remake language, myth, and time. Mlinko is a poet of art and of life, and Venice is a sumptuous exploration of poetry's capacity to capture the miracles and ironies of our times.
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Reviews
"Mlinko's erudition is astounding, and her feeling for language is maximalist . . . [The] sheer delight bubbling behind her wordplay is irresistible."
Oona Holahan, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Mlinko's poems are . . . wild, energetic, alive, wantonly catholic in their allusiveness, often downright chatty."
Troy Jollimore, The New York Times Book Review
"Dazzling . . . [Mlinko] is above all a master craftswoman, a poet of relentless exactitude combined with charm and restraint."
Jesse Nathan, McSweeney's