OUTWARD BOUND

  PRISONER'S DILEMMA by Cheryl Snell

“Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.” *

But for mystics, the disabled and convalescent, those in enclosed orders, those dedicated to fulfilling their genius, those in jail and those who exist in a mental straitjacket, whatever the cause, there is always a conundrum:

Does the elusive Truth exist on the Inside or Outside?

Hostages like Brian Keenan, Anne Frank, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, all attested a life of the spirit and the imagination that would not and could not be limited by physical and ideological constraints.

So does narrowed focus confer a sharper and profounder vision, offering its compensations? Or is Freedom only to be found upon the exterior, in the prolix toil and muddle of human activity where opportunities for discovery abound? Even where choice is possible, aren't these states mutually exclusive?

Cheryl Snell in a new chapbook, PRISONER'S DILEMMA, explores this theme in situations concerning many kinds of effacement. Each short poem is offered like a remnant of woven fabric placed under the microscope so that the colours, slubs and knots and arabesques, can be appreciated. The imagery is often stark and reminiscent of Sylvia Plath, the emotion bottled which, unstoppered, pervades an air of vaguely fragrant stoicism. Where the subtext is menacing, it frets away at a blithe surface like a sliver of glass stuck in the weave. But, often, it's uncompromising, violent, in-your-face, leaving the reader with no more than the merest scintilla of hope. The images juxtaposed in Snell's phrases cleverly release new flights of meaning as, for example in Dirty Laundry:

Tumbling from the fold

of a fitted sheet – balled-up

silk, some foreign lace. Things come

and go in this house. Last night, an earring

tangled in the wrong colour hair, everything

gone bloodshot and damp.

The man's non-sequiturs circled the drain

of his stranger's ear: Let lovers go fresh and sweet

to be undone. How else to go

with a come-on like that – innocent as soap,

pink bubbles bursting like an alibi

on the verge of coming clean.

The collection as a whole hangs together with the shape and atmosphere of René Magritte's surreal painting The Empty Mask and, in miniature, I don't doubt is as accomplished. Cheryl Snell ably demonstrates that Richard Lovelace was right!*

RJC

Chapbook hauntingly illustrated by Janet Snell.

Websites:http://shivasarms.blogspot.com/

http://snellsisters.blogspot.com/

DIANA OF THE CAPES

 HUNTRESS by Ivory Madison  (Cliff Richards, Penciller)

First, let me own up that I'm unfamiliar with the mafia noir genre, except by repute. Even as a child I didn't like comics. They missed out on the nuances that reflected my troubled reality. They were too brash. And the pictures got in the way. Those with an intuitive imagination prefer to conjure their own scenes and don't usually enjoy filmed versions of their favourite books to the full. This admission will be nothing short of heresy to fans of DC comics, I'm sure.

 All that said, the excursion into the combative world of Helena Rosa Bertinelli, Huntress, has been quite an eye-opener.

 To pack so much plot into a tight space and hang on to all the threads is in itself a triumph. It's all action, of course. Huntress is on a quest to avenge herself on those who killed the rest of her family in her presence when she was a small child. The options are clear-cut. And yet, and yet... she neatly explores in some depth all the ethical dynamics of what she's doing as she goes along. At the core of this is the niggling idea that we all think we're one of the good guys. What is she? At the end, she arrives at true self-knowledge and her personal 'take' on her purpose in life which is to 'vanquish those who cultivate fear and injustice'. With the aid of a crucifix, she baptises herself at a church font to empower herself for the mission ahead, believing that she might well be damned for eternity since the line between justice and vengeance is such a thin one.

 An atmosphere of Mafia 'family' permeates the whole story and there are some trenchant asides about the role of women, summed up in the observation: “In all the operas, women only matter if they're young, innocent and die.” As the plot thickens and events trace an intricate course towards who is really the villain of the piece, the reader might well infer that this planet is run by a handful of people. We know it is. But we're not supposed to know. If we're not to fall victim to the madness caused by conspiracy theorists, we have to configure it all as a roller-coaster romp through the human psyche left to its own devices.

 The journey Huntress takes us on is as much an interior one as action-packed adventure through many twists and turns of plot and masked identity. 'Fighting in the dark' is a phrase which might repeatedly occur to the reader. We see her evolve from feral child to adolescent with attitude, for whom a cross-bow is a natural extension of her body, to savvy and idealistic young woman with a heart like a Baked Alaska. When she falls in love, she's ready to forfeit all for the sake of her goal. “Love isn't a feeling,” a priest tells her. “It's the choices you make. It's loyalty.”

 Which probably makes her 'a good cape'. I think.

 As for the illustrations, they are, well... graphic. Animated. Powerful. Fierce. While subtle emotion is cleverly written upon a face with a few strokes, Helena Bertinelli looks like half a dozen different women to me. But I am nitpicking. The pictures and text are acutely faithful to each other and when the toned and voluptuous Huntress says: “Seeing him in jail made me want to bust him out,” you know what she means!

 All in all, a well-constructed book which afficionados will relish.

RJC

Website: http://www.ivorymadison.com/