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An Agreement With Love by Kristina Renee Mercier Stella Loretta Publishing
book review by Peter M. Fitzpatrick
"I have known the burden of incubating
a creative spirit like a caterpillar
blooms a butterfly, and felt its struggle
to release into a strange new phase of life
"
These poems follow a young woman's exploration of her inner landscape that inescapably melds with the outer landscape of nature. She wants to find stasis, security, and certainty with the right man, to fall in love. The pain of failure in this launches her into a search for meaning. The first section deals with her loss of her love and subsequent refuge in the sea, in roses, in butterflies. The butterfly farm she visits leads her to a dialogue with a man who tells her she is like a butterfly in love. He becomes "Blue Morpho," a correspondent who she touches base with throughout. This metaphor of change, of morphogenesis, becomes a central symbol in the next three parts. Her search for love and the accompanying pain and confusion finds metaphoric solace in this symbol.
This kind of poetry may be reminiscent of countless poems and novels in the romantic tradition. It avoids cliché by not taking refuge in wish fulfillment or fantasy. It is unabashedly honest and therefore brave, making the words shine with a brilliance that comes naturally with naked feeling. This kind of bare-handed slogging through the brambles and thorn bushes of emotion is almost at odds with artistry or artifice. That the author manages distancing through use of nature and its processes is instinctively right. It is only where the language becomes too precious, too poetic, that we feel she errs. But she errs very little. For the most part, the power of her language strikes up against the limits of speech. That is poetry.