archipelago counterpoint by Marcia Arrieta

“A persistence of vision which is both rare and essential”

—Mary Ruefle

In archipelago counterpoint, Marcia Arrieta's poems grow word by word, line by line, into a book that is more, much more, than the sum of the poems. They're the poems of a craftsperson, a builder, a sculptor whose material is the universe & everything that has ever been in it, from "the japanese poet & italian philosopher" through to "wild geese watercolors & mankind." Her poems contain insight, exploration, exposition; blend the concrete with the abstract; posit what might happen when you put A beside not-A or not-even-in-the-Alphabet & then discover if it does.

She writes, almost as a credo:
there is music within water. imaginary words. imaginary lives. invent.

But underpinning that statement is an obvious knowledge & grasp of the principles of mathematics & how the universe relies on them, plus the flavor of journeys through both finite & infinite space & an enumeration of the things that are found there. Magic is always at its strongest when it is underlaid with truth & imagination. As it is here.

—Mark Young

Marcia Arrieta’s poetry gathers images, phrases, concepts, and states of being into a poetic collage in which direct sensuous experience is juxtaposed with the purely linguistic and abstract, revealing a tension between the ‘conceptual’ and the poetic image, which she usually draws from nature. Her poems are at once richly visual and thoughtfully engaging….In archipelago counterpoint Arrieta offers vivid and elegant poetic articulations embracing the totality of experience and discovery.

—Ingrid Swanberg

With Arrieta’s poetry, we’re left on the edge of understanding how to connect beautiful fragments. Her lyrical poems play with sound, meaning, line break, and form….she searches in archipelago counterpoint for a way to combine the disjunctive with the personal, the tentative direction with the story, and the results are poems that linger evocatively in one’s own words.

—William Allegrezza

Marcia Arrieta’s archipelago counterpoint points to language associated with delicate inventiveness—a brand of language providing whispering emblems, musical identities, and clarity of affirmed environment….Precise, reliable appreciation engages the reader and provides context toward a thoughtful devotion to expanding understanding.

—Felino A. Soriano

With archipelago counterpoint Marcia Arrieta makes clear her love of language and her uncommon poetic intelligence. Whether referencing string theory or mulling the answers “in the stone gathered from the leucadian shore” (—the site of Sappho’s suicide and of Homer’s Ithaca), her erudition and dexterity of style combine to charm and to reward repeated readings. A sort of tour guide to things writ large, archipelago counterpoint is Arrieta at her best.

—Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino

Marcia Arrieta is a poet, artist, and teacher, who has an affinity for islands, books, gardens, and travel. Her first book of poetry triskelion, tiger moth, tangram, thyme was published by Otoliths in 2011, and she is the author of two chapbooks, experimental: (Potes & Poets Press, 2000) and the curve against the linear (Toadlily Press Quartet Series—An Uncommon Accord, 2008). Her work appears in Fourteen Hills, Catch & Release, Cold Mountain Review, Rivet, Ellipsis, Little Red Leaves, So to Speak, 13th Moon, Melusine, Truck, Posit, Ditch, Dusie, Poetry Salzburg Review, Abraxas, and The Last VISPO Anthology. She has an MFA from Vermont College. As a result of grants from Poets & Writers, she has led various poetry/writing workshops in the community. She edits and publishes Indefinite Space, a poetry/art journal—in existence for over twenty-three years, and lives on the canyon in Pasadena, California.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 104 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-214-3