Israel Star Chronicle

BY SAMIREH SAMADI


LOS ANGELES — Alysyn Bourque, a trans-lesbian neo-classical/romantic poet is preparing to release her first collection of lesbian-love themed verse in March, titled ‘Blacklight Chronicles: Selected Poems’.

When I was emailed to do this review, ironically, the same week that I saw a rainbow flag outside the front of a local bookstore and signed a petition to support gay marriage, I rummaged through my files to find the advance text of the book.

Some of my closest friends identify as gay/lesbian and many of my favorite American and English modern and post-modern poets are/were gay/lesbian, including WH Auden, Walt Whitman, Fredrico Garcia Lorca, Allen Ginsberg, Audre Lorde, the list goes on. So it seemed to me that ‘Blacklight Chronicles’ would be a positive foray back into my poetry reviewing practice.

Well, it turns out that most of the poets I was familiar with happen to be gay. Alysyn Bourque (pictured left), on the other hand, was the first trans-lesbian poet I had ever reviewed. After reading the manuscript I became an instant fan. It doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight, if you enjoy romance and poetry with passion, you will fall In Love with ‘Blacklight Chronicles’ and its author.

Strangely, most of the poems in Blacklight Chronicles don’t seem to deal with themes of lesbianism. While the author is lesbian and the subject of her work is the love between two women, she transcends sexual orientation and captivates our souls with love, sadness, vulnerability. It is both full of light and love, darkness and despair. The collection is a kaleidoscope of emotions.

In her poem SOULRISE, Bourque takes the passion of a kiss, the love of the poet for her lover, and sends us soaring into an emotional bliss, allowing the reader to share that kiss with the lovers on the page.


“…such honey’d breath which haunts the kiss
?whispered anew upon each weary eye
from behind which soulrise beckons”

~ excerpt of “Soulrise” from the collection Blacklight Chronicles

TRANS-LESBIAN POET ALYSYN BOURQUE SETS LESBIAN POETRY ON FIRE IN ‘BLACKLIGHT CHRONICLES’

In ‘Rule The Night’, there seems to be a call from poet to lover to take their love and passion onward, rather than allowing their romance to stagnate or lose the heat between to cool, as we read in ‘Aphotic Sonnatica’. Bourque seems to defend the love between the two, and calls out to her beloved to go with her and rule the night.

In another piece, “Aphotic Sonnotica”, We are thrown, along with the poet, into an erotic inferno of passion, lust and love. The fire burns in the subject of this work and the poet makes us aware that such passion is simply to hot to contain.

“…What temper’d soul, resistance, could attain,
Of conflagration stoked by fuel as she?
A foolish caust’ wouldst such endeavour dwell
Upon whom seeks to, such a fire, contain.

~ excerpt of “Aphotic Sonnotica” from the collection Blacklight Chronicles

The poet also addresses the personality of a lover who is prone to lead one on, without the elements of honesty or even the ambition for truth in the relationship. She indicts the subject in ‘hungry ghosts’ with a passionate, soulful cry for some semblance of reciprocation in what appears to be a poet in pain.

these hungry ghosts you feed
with the fleshy conceit of your writhing soul.

~ excerpt of “hungry ghosts” from the collection Blacklight Chronicles

The collection’s shining moments are those that Walk The Line between passion and pain. In particular, how the poet views her beloved and the embrace of the soul with the fire of their lust and love. It also seems to split in voice, allowing the reader to share the moment with the poet, the intimacy between two women In Love and also at romantic odds at times.

A short collection, Blacklight Chronicles is far longer in the impact in the reader. We are compelled to absorb each verse with contemplation and thoughtful abandon to the romance we are invited to share. Admittedly, we do not always know if the poet’s eyes and soul are fixed on one or several lovers. For the thoughtful romantic, it won’t matter. Blacklight Chronicles is a contemporary work of the kind of literature often born into something classical, exotic and soulful.