| Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls Author: Andrea Jarmai Andréa Jarmai is as much at home in the realms of myth, legend and fable as in the “Metropolis” where she lives. Influenced by the artistry of such diverse forerunners as W.H. Auden, Gwendolyn MacEwen and George Faludy (whose work she has translated), her poems have a musicality and flair for the dramatic unparalleled on the current scene. They are daringly populated with the likes of Lucifer, Parsifal, the Madonna, Akhenaten and Melville’s Ahab; with mages, pilgrims, and scoundrels of her own creation; and with the wolf, eagle and other “magic animals.” Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls marks the emergence of an extraordinary talent, its wide wings at full stretch. "This is the most extraordinary
new music. Incantational and reverencing of the world. Everything
Jarmai writes about, and has brought her wonder to, surrenders
wonder to the reader. It must be because she understands the yearning
of the world to speak itself and, like Cassandra, she releases
the ordinary, and restores us to the marvellous behind all things.
A refreshing and enchanting new voice." "Andréa Jarmai enters a cluttered junkshop and is drawn to a rock crystal, a crystal that contains a small dark cave. She thinks ‘microcosm’ and buys the crystal and takes it home. That night, she peers into the crystal’s dark cave to find within a ‘deep magic’ that ‘holds the spell-bound avatar.’ “This book of poems is like that rock crystal. To be found within it, page after page, are small dark caves. Some of these caves are caverns large enough to hold a ‘blue planet.’ Others are fissures that reach back in time and space to the era of Akhenaten, Gilgamesh, and Lucifer. There are cavities and grottos for Umberto Eco, Jean-Louis Barrault, George Faludy, Gwendolyn MacEwen…not to mention dragons and owls…and some especially scary ‘wolf dreams.’ The spirit of this collection is crystalline (when not clouded
over with dark prophecy). Andréa Jarmai’s Brother
to Dragons, Companion to Owls is a book of poems that is
full of surprises…and small dark caves."
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