Rose: Poems

“In The Rose, award-winning poet Ariana Reines explores the intersection of rage and surrender. Drawing on the lineage of medieval troubadours’ erotic poetry, Reines employs the feminine, sexual symbology of the titular flower to also explore masculine pain: “I loved to hurt, be hurt by him. / There was a locked & secret mansion in him that I loved.” In these poems, inherited ideologies of femininity and masculinity are replaced with bold vulnerability, and the overturning of gender dynamics transforms the speaker’s understanding of suffering, desire, and transmutation. The voice in The Rose is wry and bare, dealing honestly with the connection between erotic love and spirituality. Reines approaches these themes with humor: “I want to vomit, die, and change my life in that exact order.” Investigating war, maternity, violence and sensuality, and the role of writing in magical acts, Reines is unafraid to write “the horrible / And Freudian thing” that “might ruin this poem,” and the result is a bloody and pulsing, sexy and unabashed bloom”–