A Myth of Ariadne

Here is the continuation of Martha Ronk's life-long investigation of things as they are seen at a remove or seen not at all as in the presence of silence. Always hesitant, skeptical, her poetry circles the world the way a blind seer might. In this new collection, she follows the thread of Ariadne through the hands of men who jerk and steer her. - Fanny Howe, author of Second Childhood




Inspired by De Chirico's series of paintings depicting Ariadne, Martha Ronk writes, "Her sleeping is like waking, she is listening to whatever is said." And in this stunning new collection, A Myth of Ariadne, the poems ponder this abandoned figure who, even in her cool and classical repose, embodies history-its progress and its traumas. Placed within the poems' prosceniums, we partake of Ariadne's distracted and absorptive reflections even as catastrophe looms. Ever broadening her characteristic philosophical acuity, Ronk amplifies somatic gestures as she follows her thread to navigate conundrums of identity and perception. -Molly Bendall, author of Under the Quick




The poems in A Myth of Ariadne address De Chirico's Ariadne paintings: the myth and then the particular way De Chirico presents her as a sexualized statue threatened by intrusions of locomotives, ships, shadows, conspirators. Ronk's series, like his series, depends on the technique of disjunction, and exists in the space between the paintings, De Chirico's memoir and poems, and a jangled depiction of a woman's history.




Martha Ronk has published eleven books of poetry, including most recently Silences, Ocular Proof, and Transfer of Qualities, as well as the short story collection Glass Grapes and Other Stories, and a semi-autobiographical book on food, Displeasures of the Table. For many years, she taught creative writing and directed the campus-wide creative writing program at Occidental College in Los Angeles.