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Repulsion Thrust

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Repulsion Thrust by Magdalena Ball, paperback, pp 112, BeWrite Books,

Reviewed by Sarah James

This debut full-length poetry collection by Australian poet Magdalena Ball is full of poetic thrust, propelling the reader through thought-provoking and beautifully crafted considerations of love, illness, identity, genetics, the environment, planet - and more! Indeed, the quality of the poetry is inherent even in a simple listing of some of the intriguing poem titles: pale club of wind, Silicone Womb, Rock Talking, Pie in the Sky, Heebeejeebees...

The `Black Dog and Other Enigmas' poems of the first of three sections show us:

"amnesia a fist
replacing memory with a thud" (Black Dog Two).

And then the hospital ward as a chess board where:

"two knight nurses can't force checkmate
against lone king
you hold your knees
rock and wail
stalemate" (Black Dog Three).

In the second section, `The Crucible', we see love as a relationship of maths where "I fell back/to integers" as "I watched you trip/into the transcendental" (10 digits of e). We are infected by the "skunkweed" of the Idea Virus and the "hailstorm of greed" where "the illusion of freedom/moths at your cashmere" (Hailstorm). This section also presents us with "entomologists in black leather" as insects out-evolve man in his doomed clichéd "corridors of history"(Evolving Insects) and Repulsion Thrust, which neatly encapsulates the purpose and momentum of the whole collection:

"thrust through the repulsion
turn it to love

what else is there?"

That this is not just a collection of dark moods, illness and bleak futures is evident too in the third section, `Only Rock and Roll'. This opens with De-evolution and prefers "the old way" in Virtually Enhanced but there is still freshness and hope. "When the explosion comes/spring rushes out" in Equinox and in Love in the 21st Century , "The world greened up."

As may already be obvious, science, physics and maths pervade this collection. This is not surprising, as physics is everywhere. Though I am not a scientist and may not always understand the full complexity of physics, that doesn't mean I can't appreciate its beauty. The same is true of this compelling collection. Fractals, quantum physics and quark are something I have limited knowledge of but the poetry in the language and images Ball uses are well within grasp. More than this she turns them into something not just poetically palatable but tangibly delicious, as in Six flavours of Quark:

"The sweet reds; sticky greens; cooling blues.
Like Italian ices I would lick
quick
as a kid
tongue stained to match."

In fact, this collection invites us as readers, like the lover in Echo of The Big Bang, to:

"Meet me at the singularity
where unknown physics
gropes us
ordinary matter
stretches to a spaghetti of longing
and trillions of neutrinos
tickle us without a trace."

Many of Ball's poems in this collection are enhanced by this kind of appealing conversational touch and sense of character, as in False Alarm's "Dallying at the edge of big stupid/gravity" or Quantum Crucible, where "in the gallery of mirrors/you pissed on the laws of physics". As in the final poem of the collection, Blackout, where "for all our fancy footwork/here in the 21st Century...it only takes the flick of the switch/and we're stuffed", this seemingly light-hearted tone only gives a sharper edge to the wider implications: "the whole damn show/is over". But, of course, the best thing about this highly re-readable collection is that it is one show which is never over!

NGC4736, a.k.a. Messier 74, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici, becomes poetic in Magdalena Ball's science-and-tech-themed collection of poems. Scientific phenomena NGC4736, black holes and ice tunnels, amygdalas and the quintessential example of existential uncertainty, Schrödinger's cat, become metaphors for the most intimate human thoughts and feelings. After all the banal pseudopoetic cliches that clog modern poetry, this collection is refreshing. This collection is to much modern poetry what real science is to pseudo-scientific quackery.

To paraphrase one of Ball's lines in "Equinox," she slices great slabs of poetry from her tongue and pen. The buzzard light of dawn contrasts with the prophecy that in our digital age, the flick of a switch can doom us to literal and emotional darkness. Anyone who thinks science is cold should take a microscope to Ball's universe in which electromagnetic radiation from emotional emissions creates a tiny scientific revolution. This collection of poems is enough to inspire creative writing majors to switch to astronomy and physics. Perhaps maybe not. But Ball's verses will cause a paradigm shift.

Magdalena Ball creates a stunning impression with her first full-length collection, Repulsion Thrust. Her poems speak of experience, wisdom, and curiosity and welcome the reader to embrace a voyeuristic ride. Beautiful, haunting, and honest, Repulsion Thrust is a powerful collection with a refreshing voice and an open heart. - Lori A. May, author of STAINS: EARLY POEMS

Magdalena Ball's first full length poetry collection, Repulsion Thrust, launches the reader into a world of mathematics and quantum mechanics - but this is not science fiction. This is contemporary life, observed with a keen eye for charm, strangeness, the ups and downs of relationships, color charge, spin and mass. I am no scientist, but one can't help but slip into the language of physics on reading these poems. Even the most reluctant math student will recognise the exponential functionality of this collection, and will smile with glee as each scientific metaphor is used with ease and confidence. And they'll realise why both Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking are mentioned in the acknowledgements.

The book contains seventy-eight poems and is divided into three sections with subtly different flavors. The title poem, `Repulsion Thrust', appears in the middle of the second section and encapsulates the qualities of the entire book. Addressed from the poet to `you', as are many of the poems in this collection, it references scientific ideas in a conversational rather than formal way to examine the human condition; specifically, the importance of overcoming anger to achieve love, for as the poem asks, `what else is there?'.

The subtlety of the writing makes for vivid imagery. The `mediocre children hugging thick waists' in the poem `ineluctable' couldn't help but remind me of Tennessee Williams' `no-neck monsters' in `Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'. Once I'd read that poem, I had a voice in my head, and it stayed to the end. Ball knows people; knows the minutiae of their emotional lives, and how, when the summer visitors have gone,

we shuffle slowly
back to empty rooms
to face the long
winter ahead.

Ball has a wonderful knack of the unexpected metaphor. I love the Isle of Skye and would never have expected to see the Black Cuillin used with such profundity in a poem by an American living in Australia. `pale club of wind' achieves this feat through masterful imagery set around `the Black Cuillin of your dreams'. In stark geographical contrast, the very next poem, `Black Dog Two', jumps the reader across the galaxy to the clouds of Jupiter:

swirling white, brown, and orange, eddy shapes, ovals and stripes,
curtains of ammonia and sulfur, hazes of fog, angry atmosphere

This is not space travel, however. This is a very earthly description of anguish. As in all the poems, the reader is plunged into Ball's emotionally charged and all too real world of pain and love:

the heat of your fingers brushed my hand
as you breathed in

From heat, to chill. The next poem takes those same hands and washes them in murky water. The scene is the separation and isolation of an icy bed.

This is the way to arrange a poetry collection; have each poem lead inevitably and logically into the next. In a novel, it's easy. You have a story. It keeps going. So long as each chapter ends with some sort of conflict requiring resolution, you have your reader hooked. It's not so easy in a poetry collection, where thinking about the arrangement of the poems can take almost as long as writing them. If you don't achieve a logical flow of ideas, the reader will put the book down and forget to pick it up again, however well-crafted the poetry.

The collection ends with a wonderful portmanteau poem that manages to reference both Dr Who and Hamlet, along with Newton and Galileo, in a deceptively light-hearted exploration of the potentialities of science combined with the frailty of humanity. That makes it sound hard to read. It isn't. And that's the great joy of this collection. These poems flow. They never overdo the scientific language, so are never obscure. They're always easy to read and always beguiling. This is a book of poetry for anyone who has been in love and knows what it is to live in the twenty-first century, but who is more than a little scared of what might happen if all the lights went out. Take these poems seriously. They may just have some of the answers you require.

This is a pretty amazing collection. While reading this I felt like a physicist, in love with the loneliness of passion and monotonous domesticity, on the set of a movie resembling both Bladerunner and some sort of Noir Romance. I recommend this for those who like to indulge in poetry that doesn't make them feel like they need a degree to understand it. Although it is quite complex when you take a deeper look, the poems' surface beauty is prominent and transports you into an entirely different world.

I've read that these poems are about love. I can't seem to grasp that notion. Yes, some do mention love, but not in the sense that you expect love to be spoken about, so I found myself wondering, "what the heck are they talking about?" These poems, to me, speak of a place in one's soul many are hesitant to expose in a world that is primarily preoccupied with conforming to social expectation. And you'll just have to read the collection to find out exactly what I mean by that. ;o)

"Repulsion Thrust" is a collection of intelligent, thought provoking, 21th century poetry that both celebrates and disavows our technological dependency:

From: "Blackout"
"...no candles in the larder
no coffee in the pot
lose the power or take out the plug

the whole damn show
is over."

From: "Folly of Growth"
"...this learned man
university boy
fastgrowing speed thinker
at the head of the table
amidst knowledge starved suckers
anxious to climb his body..."

Poem after poem tackles the technological challenges of our day, not technologically but exquisitely poetically. My copy has been my companion for the last week; I pull it out, as I'm am having tea at my local coffee shop, or waiting for the bus, or walking though the neighborhood. I read a poem or two, and then reflect, and smile-I'm in no hurry to finish:

"...use it
thrust through the repulsion
turn it to love

what else is there?"

This isn't a long review. It needn't be. All that need be said is that "Repulsion Thrust" is the pefect combination of imagery, poetic skill, and science. Those who understand string theory will love it! Those who don't care, those who enjoy reveling in poetry by the fire in February's worse weather will, too.
----
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of "Tracings," winner of the Military Writer's Society award for poetry.

Poetry gives me headaches. The fractured narratives and Rorschach quality of its projective, anything goes, forays into the realm of subjectivism have kept me a good arm's length from this peculiar style of writing. I have always thought that what poetry attempts to achieve has found a better home in song lyrics. On the flip side, when one reads song lyrics (even the best) as poems rather than listens to them within the context of music, the result is often embarrassingly banal. I challenge anyone to read, rather than listen to, the sumptuous lyrics of, say, Joni Mitchell. Brace yourself for a good cringe. Without musical arrangements to support them, some poetic song lyrics are just plain dumb.

Imagine, then, when I found myself riveted by the poems of Magdalena Ball in her new anthology titled REPULSION THRUST published by BeWrite Books. To be honest, I am somewhat biased in this evaluation by my background as a professional scientist. I found myself (almost) sexually aroused by the appearance of references to Schrödinger's cat, six quark flavors, Darwinian foundations, the amygdala, and many others that I'm omitting lest I be regarded as a big fat, smarty-pants.

But REPULSION THRUST is not just a parochial anthology of poems for investigators of natural law. The scientific references will only whet the interest of those unfamiliar with the technical terminology, not confuse or put them off. Ball's poetry qualifies as an unsentimental sojourn through the naked brain. Her jagged lines prevent readers from resting too easy in their comfy chairs. A mild, anxiety-provoking mood pervades every page. The occasional "cigarette break" comfort arrived only at the times when I was reminded of Natalie Angier's outstanding science writing in "The Canon."

REPULSION THRUST will appeal to anybody who appreciates smart, terse writing, whether informed by prose or poetry. And the price is unbeatable.
My favorite? "Night Swims" What's yours?