Sono: Cantos

by Sarah Arvio

Here is Sono, a new collection of bracingly original poems, from the prizewinning author of Visits from the Seventh . Composed during a long stay in Rome, these cantos look outward in order to look inward, transforming sights and stories into expressionistic explorations of the state of the heart. Playful, probing, philosophical, colorful, often funny, they describe a struggle to come to terms with loss and grief and to find a basis for renewal; they ask whether and how life is worth living, taking pleasure in the questions themselves. “It wasn’t the life I would have wanted, / had I known what sort of life I did want,” starts the poem entitled “Chagrin.” “I do believe I was never loved,” announces “Obelisk.” Riffing expertly, Sarah Arvio brings wit and exquisite formal discipline to her gorgeous meditations on the life lived. These are high-burning songs of the self— colloquial, sexy, unflinching, and unforgettable.

A colossal mess I made of my life,
in the flesh and also in the round;
this was the essence of colosseum,

the museum of my colossal shame,
where I mused on the blood sport of it all. . .
(from "Colosseum")

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone already hooked by Arvio's momentous Visits from the Seventh will love this work.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A splendid collection, enlivening both Ancient Rome & a very special visitor, rich with mediations that never lack for playfulness, despite their profundity, & eye-popping for its refined effects, particularly Arvio's rare ear for assonance & consonance-- SONO is all this & more, & it first earned my praise some years ago. I could swear I posted a 5-star review back about 2010. But today, after looking at her latest, I returned to this site & I couldn't find the review or some reason. Perhaps the problem was mine, but in any case, I want very much to rectify it now. Arvio's Roman sojourn remains one of my favorites, its lines offers torso-twists worthy of Michelangelo, even when considering the city's name: "This was the question that was romanesque, // or else something random or romantic." This gifted woman has an ear worthy of an opera /apassionato,/ & at the same time, she releases fundamental & timeless passions in every strangely sinuous verse: "was I its shadow or its positive,/ was I its pentacle or palindrome./ The point was to see there was no point, // or was the arrow pointing to the heart?"

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subtitle of Sarah Arvio’s Sono (meaning "sound") is "cantos", which is appropriate enough, given that the poems contained within read very much like songs: they are highly musical and filled with repetition (or call it refrain). About a third of the way through the book, I briefly wondered if I would tire of the relentless rhyme and word play, especially given that all of the poems are remarkably consistent in structure, tone, and length. I'm happy to report that I enjoyed every last one of them. The poems were written during an extended stay in Rome, and many of them take the ancient city as a subject or setting, but not in any predictable way you'd imagine. Rome is merely the launching point for the poet's more inward-directed, philosophical eye. Arvio's delight in language is contagious, and her whipsmart, assonant riffing is breathtaking. She nods to several language-loving greats, presumably her influences, including:

Sylvia Plath (from "Colosseum")

Here was my game, the name of my sin,
for I never threw men to the lions
or rose from my lair or ate men like air…

Elizabeth Bishop (from "Graffito")

…here where the graph may be the holy grail.
Let's grapple with the beasts—that is, the bears—
let them tear us—write it!—from limb to limb.

and Wallace Stevens (from "Pantheon")

…or read my palm and tell me what you see:
I see a palm at the end of my mind,
swaying like an arm, waving like a hand…

Most of all, Arvio's work reminds me of Heather McHugh's, for her intense word play, attention to etymology, her speaker's self-awareness and general bawdiness:

But I was slim bodied and full-breasted

and tired of my island, my eye, my land,
and no, I didn’t need a fallacy!
And no more pathos! (It was pathetic.)

I needed a phallus—but not on me—
and not in the elements or heavens.
A flash in the flesh and not in the pan!

from "Tempest"


And, from "Sine Qua Non":

Quo vadis, as history often asked;
the answer, always, was I'm going back,
looking for a goose, a lamb or a duck,

a croon or a cluck, a quid for my quo.
This was quackery, I mean a bad fix,
dumb luck, my destiny or a dumb fuck,

many beautiful fucks, quote me on this,
meaning fucking you again and again
and being fucked by you, which was the same.


I borrowed this book from the UW library, but this is one volume that I'm going to end up buying for keeps. These are poems that I wish I’d written myself. In the end, I think Sarah Arvio provides the best perspective on her own poems in "Hope":

…turning toward the sun, turning toward the sound
—my warp of the world, my harp of the heart—

sounding like myself, as I always sound,
snappy and stylish and too sonorous,
a little savage and a little sweet.

[Candy Shue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific poems--I love the way she makes words leap!

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could hear Shakespeare's fool(s) declaiming these poems as I read. Or three genius women gathered in a woods, talking them to the sky. Unexpected poems. Five stars because of all that. Not for everyone but most certainly an achievement. "Grief" is one of my favorites. "If you want a big thing oh take a grave, / if you want a grand thing, oh take a life, / try out a garden, try out a grave."

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's been some time since I read poetry seriously. I have my favorites and I'm familiar with their vagueness and moments of piercing clarity.

There were moments in this collection where I felt that there was too much rhyme, too much alliteration.

That said, I always get something out of poetry and the act of reading it is never without pleasure. Poetry can be like meeting new people: it's good to remember that there are very different people in the world, some that are even difficult to communicate with, and yet they contribute to our understanding of the world.

[SA · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't quite know how I got on to Arvio's poetry, but I set out to read her published works and mostly adhered to that. I struggle with it, though, because I find so much of her work to be a weird combination of off-the-cuff and constructed that I don't connect with. It's like she gets this fragment of an ultimately narcissistic dream, and spends the poem refashioning it into some echo of what she first remembered. I guess it doesn't seem like there's a lot in there, at least not for me, which is disappointing as I'd hoped Sono would resound.

[Mills College Library]

811.6 A795s 2006