Apocalyptic, haunting, religious, three-dimensional - all of these words have been used to describe Larissa Szporluk's poetry. But none of them do the job completely.
Szporluk is a new name in contemporary poetry. Hers is an entirely new brand, one that is meditative, lyric and somewhat remote. As a poet, she cannot be compartmentalized into any of the rampant schools of thought that are currently taking the poetry world by storm.
A graduate of the University's well-respected Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing, Szporluk looks forward to returning to Charlottesville. She will be reading her poetry at 8 tonight in the University Bookstore.
Only recently has Szporluk been adorned with the prized labels that most poets salivate over. Her first collection of poems, titled "Dark Sky Question," was named the winner of the 1997 Barnard New Women Poets Prize; her second collection, "Isolato," won the Iowa Poetry Prize just last year. Recently her work has been appearing in quite a few established literary magazines and journals - she has even had to decline several opportunities to be published because her newest poems are as of yet unfinished.
Szporluk is now a professor for the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at Bowling Green State University. In her early 30s, Szporluk has two children and a husband - Carlo Celli, who incidentally will be giving a presentation about Roberto Benigni and Dante in Clemons Library today at 11 a.m.
After earning her M.F.A., Szporluk caught the all-too-common publishing bug and began putting emphasis on being published instead of finishing her poems. About the publishing process, Szporluk says, "Fortunately, I got rejected a lot, because emotionally, I began to turn against the publishing scene and started writing completely from the inside."
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This shift in approach to her poetry made all the difference. She says, "Little by little did my work start to take notice. People are soliciting my work now, which I think is hilarious." It is laughable not because her work is unworthy, but because it has been only a few years since she was subjected to so many undeserved rejections.
Now, Szporluk focuses on her craft alone and refuses to give in to publishing pressures, unless she feels her poems are totally finished. She says, "I like the tension of what I'm doing now - it's sort of against the publishing scene." She adds, laughing, "It's a combative style, I guess."
Szporluk says her latest poems are "fuller experiences" than "Dark Sky Question's" earlier poems. "I want readers to feel I am opening something from the unknown. I want my poems to show the uncertainty that lies in where I'm going and what I'm seeing."
By suggesting moments of sudden emptiness as well as the sense of unexplored space, her poetry might seem inspired by science fiction. Szporluk denies this and even finds it somewhat funny. However, there is some merit to that comparison. In the same vein of Ray Bradbury's stories (some of which she read after her poetry was compared to his fiction), each poem possesses a piece of an abyss, an empty space to fall into.
"I don't want to write an ice-skating poem, where everything is beautiful and gliding along, and no one ever falls. I could never be pleased by that," she said. "There has to be tension in my poetry, whether it is a tension of emotions and people colliding or whether they are falling away from one another. Things cannot be harmonized - I don't feel poetry in myself when there is harmony."
As a poet, Szporluk combines the isolation of Emily Dickinson with the mythical elements of Louise Glck. She is right - harmony doesn't exist in her poetry. But the dissonance is so artful and the cadence so rhythmic that harmony isn't missed.
Szporluk's main concern is that her work moves. "It doesn't matter if it's a forward movement - just anything but back," she said.
It's obvious that her poetry is moving, and that the movement is forward. Her third book of poetry is already at a publisher. "It's done, it's circulating. It's inspired by 'Pinnochio' of all things," she said.
Szporluk is careful to mention that she is not yet an accomplished poet. Yet, she realizes that now is her most crucial moment. She must be prepared for what comes. Tonight will provide a crucial moment as well - for her audience, that is.
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