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By LaDonna Witmer 2007, This Blank Page Productions 124 pages, $12.99 Poets are, as close to definition as possible, obsessed with themselves and death. All of the sex and drugs that get involved are merely byproducts of the twin disciplines of narcissism and morbidity. Of course not every poet gets tied up with sex and drugs, but whatever it is that comes out, the self and the grim reaper remain the core sources (and of course we don't really write about those types of poets in these pages.) While this doesn't play out so well as a lifestyle choice in the mainstream of life, or literature and the arts for that matter, the straight world has a curious way of being slightly more tolerant of excessive or eccentric behavior in poets…a pass for being so obsessed if you will, in exchange for mining these depths for nuggets of brilliant enlightenment that will produce resonant truths that ultimately, allow the average reader or audience member quick access to the self-obsession "drug" without having to pay the consequences of addiction. San Francisco poet LaDonna Witmer is very smart about this dynamic in her poem collection "The Secrets of Falling" (This Blank Page productions, 2007). "I am both who you I want you to see and who I really am and sometimes those two trip over each other so often they are impossible to disentangle." * from "The Everyday Show" While Witmer references Death intermittently in the collection, she uses it mostly as a storefront prop to dress up the much more real issue of identity and identity deconstruction and reconstruction. And this is not to say that significant "others" don't wind up getting entangled in this mesh: "at first glance it would seem we are becoming mirror images latin on one arm blood on the other. (you wear your scar to the right.) the similarities are mostly unintentional and often accidental. look twice and anybody can tell two from two. we are not identical yet. * From "SWF" Witmer's prose can get a bit clunky at times (see 4th verse above) but unlike most poets who dress their work up in lacey black, she has a wonderful knack for cutting through the bullshit of the bleak vagaries of shoe gazing and pulling out the glorious little shining insights: "Sometimes I think about hurting myself just so you'll pay me attention. Today it was the stairs and a tumbledown vision. You wouldn't question the sincerity of my fall. You already know I am the clumsiest lover. Heat seeking lips fumbling for purchase on a place that exists somewhere that is else. Somewhere that is no longer here. Sometimes I think although you love me better I love you harder. * From "Lovesong" It's no accident that Witmer hearkens back to the spare brilliance of Sylvia Plath (and there is a tribute poem to "Sylvia" in the book) but very successfully builds upon the Plath legacy (since Sylvia is the seminal godmother of this genre of poetry) by updating the inherent relationship politics ("Newlyweds") and identity issues ("Alter Ego.") At the same time, Witmer adds a lyricism that is not typical in Plath, giving the poems the feeling of a conversation instead of a meditation. Of course, Plath did not have a book that carried the multi-media production values the co-operatively published "Secrets…" appears to have had. The design of Kathy Azada using stark and alluring photographs with a mixture of black and white font (sometimes in the same poem further adding to the sense of dialogue with the self or "another" as in "Pretty. Good. Girl.") This adds depth to the gothic feel of the collection, though in my opinion the font is too small; this may have been necessary to keep some of Witmer's longer pieces within the necessary parameters of the design. "The Secrets of Falling" ultimately succeeds in transcending the cliché ghetto of "confessional" poetry because LaDonna Witmer does not flinch from revealing the core tenets which make poetry so vital to its advocates.
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