In these poems, Teresa Cader undertakes three poetic explorations, all of them deriving from the book's opening image of a paper wasp spinning its white nest on a terrace in ancient China. The paper universe assembled by the wasp teems with both destructive and creative forces and will lead to the invention of paper and the power of writing. The book's first section explores the mystery of creativity; the second looks beneath the papery surface of the nest at the connection between physical and figurative birth. "Internal Exile," winner of the Poetry Society of America's 1997 George Bogin Memorial Award, forms the third section of the collection, addressing the invasion of the nest by destructive powers in the example of the life of Soviet writer Eugenia Ginzburg.

Teresa Cader

Marlboro Press, The

Hydra Books

United States, United States of America

Evanston, Illinois, ©1999

1, PS, 1999

1, US, 1999

In Teresa Cader's The Paper Wasp, three poetic explorations extend from the book's opening image of a paper wasp spinning its white nest on a terrace in ancient China, while the future inventor of paper watches.The paper universe assembled by the wasp teems with both destructive and creative forces, mimicking the demands of the life cycle. Its beautiful surface becomes the springboard for the invention of paper and the transformation of writing. The poems in the first section, concerned with speaking, reading, writing, printing, and healing, have at their core the mystery of creativity.The second section of The Paper Wasp looks beneath the papery surface of the nest to explore the connection between physical and figurative birth, as Cader mines the descent into the unknown that characterizes both pregnancy and creative work. And in "Internal Exile", the long poem that forms the third section of the book, Cader addresses the destructive power in the nest through the life of Eugenia Ginzburg, the Soviet writer imprisoned by Stalin for refusing to denounce a colleague's book. Faced with the loss of both her children and her country, Ginzburg turned to writing as the medium through which she could bear witness to her brutal physical exile and her inner psychic triumph.Cader's voice moves effortlessly from the physical to the metaphysical, yoking them with verbal wit and vibrant imagery. The Paper Wasp marks a new lyric inquiry into the meanings of creativity, conception, and birth, and their relationships to writing.

2023-06-28