| Andréa
Jarmai
 |
|
Photo by V. Tony Hauser |
Andréa Jarmai is a Toronto poet with poems published literary
journals in Canada, the US, England, Ireland and Japan. She was
the 2002 winner of the Art Bar's Discovery Night contest, and
has been invited to sit on the board of the Art Bar Poetry Series,
which she regularly hosts or co-hosts.
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Andréa grew up living and travelling
in Europe, Africa, North America and the Caribbean, before settling
Montréal, where she studied Classics. She has worked as
a falconer involved with raptor rehabilitation in Québec,
and upon moving to Toronto, as a falconer and keeper at the Metro
Toronto Zoo.
She has also taught English in Canada and during her travels,
and recently returned from a nine-year stay in Japan. While in
Japan, she composed music and lyrics for Fooliar, a band for which
she is lead vocalist and second guitarist. The band released a
CD, “fooliar”, in 1999, in Japan.
Andréa has read regularly at Toronto's various poetry
reading series, as well as on CIUT Radio. She read at the Gwendolyn
MacEwen Memorial Benefit Auction and Readings, hosted by the Pteros
Gallery, in Toronto.
In addition to translating the poetry of the Hungarian-Canadian
poet George Faludy into English as an ongoing project, Andréa
has translated into Hungarian and read onto CDs the work of poet
Penn Kemp, in whose Peace Poem reading/performance events she
regularly participates.
She has published three chapbooks: The Ahab Poems, in January
of 2003, One Bee, in October 2003, and Woman in Armour, April
2004, all by Fooliar Press. Her first book-length collection of
poems, under the editorship of Allan Briesmaster, was published
by Seraphim Editions, in April of 2004.
Currently Andréa is editing a volume of critical essays
on the work of Gwendolyn MacEwen, for Guernica Editions' Writers
Series, and working on her second book of poems, with the working
title of Paracelsus’ Dreams.
The
League of Canadian Poets
Poetry By Andréa Jarmai
Lucifer Speaks
Labyrinth
Lucifer
Speaks
Lucifer Speaks
after Raymond Queneau
Knowledge, of a sort, is what I was after,
some militant spark to salvage a life
of mindless perfection as chartered lamplighter
in an absence of night; little bureaucrat,
with a job in name only, appointed to save
his face in the mirror, gaudy image
of the dumb blond archangel caught
in the glass lit by his proper heavenly
body exuding the useless, redundant
radiance each morning reborn.
I looked for what would render in substance
the empty placebo, impotent symbol
of my name – “Come in, my angel,
first among seconds, rise from the gutter.
I, your creator, will make you a star . . . ”
I wanted some reason for not being elsewhere;
a career, if you will, to banish the boredom,
the jaded inertia that absolute good
imparts to unsullied virtue; to find
something raw, rediscover the taste
of our daily ambrosia, flung to us without fail
every heavenly thrice-blessed day.
I wanted it all. Lordship; choices;
knowledge my brain presupposed.
Like the image template, I am that I am –
no puppet of clay.
Beauty, of a sort, is what I was after,
and sure knowledge that it was indeed my truth;
Lucifer, judging with power of veto
all I've created; with certain vision
and practised hand, see and say:
“This is good!” What matters good in this
unquesting utopia where Good Triumphant
shepherds our collective mind? I wanted
to take, not be given, what's mine. To worship?
Possibly; but not for a living. By choice,
open eyes levelled, perhaps at the throne,
perhaps at the mirror; render only
to God, not his creature, and not on my knees.
As lord of this place, I rule. The sulphur
blisters my skin; lurid by gaslight,
livid and scaly – thin; flame
sears my brain that raped the forbidden
tree of the exclusive – I burn. Scream
into the void, spew my frustration's
bilious venom into the Face of Gold
I once had loved, again and again:
I turn gold into lead, bring darkness full
circle for new light to spring, and arise golden:
pinioned phoenix on newly grown wings.
But what is the use; the sulphur clings,
Hellfire marks me its own –
here forever . . .
if Truth be Knowledge, it has not set me free.
Arms of Prometheus held out to the universe,
here I stand: Devil.
© Andréa Jarmai
Labyrinth
In her small hut
on sea-girt Naxos
mad old Ariadne dreams.
Nights go by slowly;
the golden thread lost,
the dreams move in circles.
Sometimes she raves.
Daylight is easier,
the local farmers are kind.
On slaughtering days
they allow her to garland
the calves she calls brothers;
when she weeps
they lead her gently away.
The children bring honeycombs,
the women plait flowers
into her thinning hair –
lest the gods envy beauty
they've hidden her mirror
some time ago.
On every new daisy
the last plucked petal
ends in “he loves me;”
the annual mail-boat
still brings a message,
“Coming in spring.”
The words are simple,
the dialect local,
but madness is merciful
in some ways.
On sea-girt Naxos
the seasons go by,
no-one keeps count.
The year circles,
and begins again.
© Andréa Jarmai
|
