Oriana Ivy Boeken

If one were to describe these poems in a single word, it would be "interweave." Like most modern poets, Oriana Ivy writes poems based on her life experiences, particularly as they pertain to having grown up in Poland and having come to the U.S., alone, at the age of seventeen. The absurd humor of foreign-language textbooks or lessons in "military preparedness" is part of the charm here, but another text is interwoven here. While the Moscow-controlled state carries on its inept propaganda (see "Cinema Desire"), the true masters of propaganda, the Catholic church, are incessantly at work, knowing that a child exposed to the teachings early enough is "ours forever." Thus, the metaphysical, but never preachy, aspect in many poems here. The first language, the first country, and the first metaphysics are abandoned by the poet, but they leave an indelible imprint - a kind of "poem behind the poem." The result is a satisfying richness: both the difficult everyday world and the winged imagination receive their due.

"How to Jump from a Moving Train" offers an interweave of immigrant experience with a complex mother-daughter relationship, with a secondary interweave of history and myth. The speaker was born and raised in Poland, and came to this country when she was seventeen. Her poems often address the "doubleness" of being an immigrant, the deep cultural divide that the experience tends to produce.