Andrea Janda

Poems with a concise focus or an autobiographical theme are often unsuitable as true verse, but Andrea Janda avoids the pitfalls in her July 2013 piece "God is Red" in PDXX Collective. Usually I try to space out pieces if someone earns a second spot, but I think this poem is especially interesting as cold weather dawns around part of the world.

This piece is a longer poem, but has some truly exceptional parts. It speaks to philosophy not contained by mere modern thought, there are multiple levels here and the ancient nature of the verse is quite unique. It's like neo-classicalism's revival in the Imagist poets of the 1900s, of Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle and of ancient Sappho as well. It's quite intense in a way that lurks behind you, proclaiming silently like an oracle. You have to parse it after it sucks you in with it's great language.

Here's an excerpt:

My mother comes to visit me in Washington, DC.
It is February—bitter and bright,
the sun, a silver coin conjured behind a grey silk curtain.
These three facts decide what monuments and museums
[...]
my mother’s long auburn hair
swept the back of her thighs
and the wind pulled it behind her
like the dark, red scream
of a horse’s mane.
[...]

and nature was truthful and brutal, like my mother,
who was both of those things,
and like nature, was also beautiful.
Nature was god,
and god is red.
[...]