The Astronaut's Wife: Poems Of Eros And Thanatos

This Girl Can Write indeed! The Astronaut's Wife - Poems of Eros and Thanatos establish Lorette Luzajic as a rising, multi-talented poet on the Canadian scene. Her insights into the heights and depths of our common human struggle to live out our own often-buried divinity hold the ring of authenticity and truth. Weep, laugh, enjoy!

One of the true blessings of my life has been not only knowing Lorette, but also getting to share parts of her life with her. Now with "The Astronaut's Wife", anyone can share this fascinating life, too. Lorette is able to take the insanity, intensity & impact of many situations and transform the experience on to the page. She does this with both the stark reality and also the humour needed to stay sane throughout. Having shared many of the people, places & situations that she references, I can tell you that she nails it on an emotional level. It is very real; the pain, and gravity of life.
With this collection, all can share these elements, and also learn the lessons that come from them. That is perhaps the greatest gift of "The Astronaut's Wife." We can learn to deal with ANYTHING and find laughter in it too. This work, like the author's life, is a roller coaster ride well worth taking. Stirring, jarring, and rich with many emotions.

The author poignantly claims in one of these collected poems that she "looked straight into darkness to see a starry night." Indeed, Lorette C. Luzajic has had some highs and lows and she bares them openly in The Astronaut's Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos. Without lowering her gaze, she lets you look straight inside of her and you may flinch before she does.

The Astronaut's Wife- a poetry book with one of the most amazing cover designs by painter Iaian Greenson- takes its title from a mediocre movie of the same title, but of appropriate melodrama and a good cast. Luzajic borrows to suit her whims frequently, not because she isn't wholly original- she surely is- but because written, visual, musical and cinematic culture are mainstays of her palette in both her mixed media paintings and in her writing. Guest appearances from all walks of high and low culture may or may not be recognized by her readers, but add layers of depth at every turn. In this case, the title is a perfect fit in keeping with the poet's grim and steady gaze into the dark skies in search of that Van Gogh-ian glory. Much of her work resonates with this balancing of dark and light, and here the intensity of irony and sorrow shines forth straight from the title. For the book is dedicated to her late husband, who lived the philosophy of psychonautism and then died from it. For the exploration of unknown frontiers can and does lead to death, but still the poet seeks in this collection to know them.

And if the borrowed cover title sums it all fittingly in the poet's personal folklore, the last poem The Astronaut wraps it all up with a bit of an homage to Dylan Thomas. How dare you go so gently into that good night, she says last of all.

The journey through love and death is harrowing but an amazing resilience shines through creatively as the poet takes you into her psyche. She reveals the kind of betrayals in love that many of us have endured, prying apart their layers with intuition and wisdom. In Prison Blues, she laments the fall-out of a beautiful relationship ruined by control issues. "And yes it's easy on a Sunday to miss you," she admits, "the lonely chill of frosty daylight feels sentimental, and does not recall how we wrung each other into total emptiness." She expresses her fears, wondering if anyone will ever "reach for me the way you reach for me." Without holding onto anger, she acknowledges the possibility that no one's "intention is to hurt another- love simply longs to possess another, to keep them with a jailer's hands."

Other works show a more cynical and bitter edge toward love and its "quiet scars and gaping maw" (Valium for Breakfast) but the poet still retains in these furious expressions a sardonic sense of humour. "Since you asked," she writes, "I'll tell you what has become of me…I'm fat, and work as a cashier, just as Satan promised me on Highway 61." (That's a somewhat obscure reference, by the way, to the great Canadian film Highway 61- there is a scene where Satan tells a poor little girl with big dreams that she isn't going to be famous, she's going to be fat and work as a cashier.) But just when it appears that Luzajic might be feeling sorry for herself, (forgivable, I think, for in matters of love we all have those moments) suddenly, she is tough and beautiful and reflective: in Damage she tells us she can't be sure "he is prepared for the life of a poet, for the rain soaked rooms her soul hides." And in Untitled for A. she says confidently that she has been many things, from starlet to ghost to artist to lover and that she "was never all those pieces you could not pick off the ground."

Eros is perhaps a loose interpretation because while many of the poems are erotic or about romantic partners, some of the most powerful are about family, and in fact Luzajic has dedicated the book to her husband, father and brother, the men who have, she says, made her who she is. The most stunning pieces in Love are those that open and close that section. In my brother shows me easter, she turns looking at the moon through her brother's telescope into a visionary experience we can all share. And the piece that closes the first part of the book is a ten-part poem about family experience, bridging the themes nicely with a last line that refers to love and life as a complicated thing that can easily be simplified- in the end, it is only ashes after all.

It would be unfair to give too much away from the Death section of Luzajic's poetry. For here, the artist's soul is tortured by loss, and it is expressed so beautifully that the reader can't help but cry. The poetry seems to contemplate the dead in all ways with unbelievable eloquence. There's murder and mayhem and methamphetamine, suicide and AIDS and cancer. Yet something of that starry night shines in each poem, words that comfort and heal even as they mourn. The poems are very personal and yet one gets the feeling that they are written on behalf of everyone, f