Guy Wires

When one reads the exquisite short title poem of GUY WIRES the temptation of course is to assign Elisavietta Ritchie the moniker of Spider Woman. And how wonderful and potent that the stuff of which she spins her web is love. This is a very serious poet who weaves her poems with the tensile strength of spider silk greater than the same weight of steel and with much greater elasticity. Her poems make remarkable connections between her manic intelligence and the dear particulars of the world. Line by line she pulls us forward into her creation and we lie there calm mesmerized and grateful for the new take on the world she invariably wraps us in. There is a lot of talk these days of the wise woman something like Erda in Wagners Ring Cycle that makes a reader realize they are in the presence of a mind worth hearing. Your dog knows./Shes different when/the moon is full she tells us. But the poems swing through the human passions of sex politics and other worldly appetites with the agility of a Peter Parker on a joyful romp through the canyons of Manhattan. She has thrown a pentagram web over her private world organizing a lifetime of experience and joy into five architectural sections - one thinks of Frosts notion that the final poem in a book of poetry is the books organization. AT THE EDGE salutes dissident poets she has known and supported in a long life of taking responsibility for her actions: Yet in this land/ a poem can... land you in jail and I have told others write with your blood. In Sisterhood: Mothers of Prisoners she commiserates with the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova May we at least find/ uncertain solace in our sisterhood. This is a beautifully felt group of poems told with beautiful simplicity and power: ​How can shapes and blots ​of lives steaming with pain ​and so much love be forgot. ​ ​ The poems in WEAVERS become an ars poetica for the poet and often reflect on the great mystery of death. ​ ​In time Ill go blind ​so while the lunatic moon ​crowns from the sea ​must write fast ​snatch at stars - In part three EXPLORATIONS Ritchie alerts us to the fact that she is coloring outside the lines. The Thing about Drinking for example treats us to multiple personalities in a single bound as it were. Some of these poems are simply a riot. After a long plodding trek to find a beach and finally have a swim she is greeted with a signboard reading: BEWARE! RIPTIDES! RISKY! BOXJELLYFISH LETHAL! SHARKS! CROCODILES! The last two sections of GUY WIRES imagine other lives in the animal kingdom: FELLOWS; and celebrate the moving force love pushing all of creation forward in the final section of the web titled CENTRAL. We leave them to you no comment to peruse at your pleasure but only to say how proud and pleased we are to have been bitten by this exotic startling and powerful creature. What a poet!