Named after the renowned Amphitheater in Rome, Colosseum, by Katie Ford, published by Gray Wolf Press in 2008, reminds us through moments both tender and horrific, that death and destruction do not play favorites; disaster is not specific to an isolated person, environment or era. Ford quotes Tolstoy in an epigraph for her third and final section of the collection to underscore how private and individual devastation can be, yet everyone experiences its wrath one way or another: “It was as though I lived a little, wandered a little, until I came to a precipice, and I clearly saw that there was nothing ahead except ruin.”
The book deals with the sensitive matter of suffering, a theme written about for centuries, in a powerful and contemporary manner, even as she deconstructs the falling of the Roman Colosseum, the Doumo of Florence, and other biblical or mythical disasters. Each profound historical account revisited could be read as an elegy, or as vessel large enough to hold Ford’s own cataclysmic experiences and the constant questioning of her god, the depth of her origin, and her place in a world both magnanimous and vastly disappointing.
In the opening poem, “Beirut,” a poem of origin, a requiem of the day of her birth and “the day Saigon falls and Lebanon takes to its own throat a club,” the first two lines foreshadow what the reader is to find thematically throughout the collection: “ruin is a promise/we make to each other.” No matter the catastrophe revisited, Ford holds tight to, at the least, three concrete details and weaves them through both her narrative and lyrical poems: the ocean, the radio, and insects. For example, all three can be found in just one line from “Beirut”: “the locusts have traveled far into her radio,/their bodies cast with boat shaped tips.” These concrete images remain a constant throughout the collection.
Ford is no stranger to horrors of natural disasters as she experienced Hurricane Katrina firsthand; many of the poems in Colosseum allude to the storm’s impact and ways in which the aftermath was dealt with. Many other cataclysms are present in poems throughout the collection, both thematically and within narratives; perhaps Ford recalls various catastrophes, large and small, ancient and contemporary, in order to address the personally sensitive matter of Hurricane Katrina and its bearing on her.
In “Flee,” the first poem of the section titled Storm, Ford reflects on the tragic accounts of Hurricane Katrina and the fall of the Louisiana Superdome; there are hints of guilt in lines, “didn’t I wish/but didn’t I flee,” and utter frustration fired by anguish in the poem’s ending:
What do you expect me to do
I am not human
I gave you each other
so save each other.
The collection’s third and concluding section, also titled Colosseum, contains the poem, “Colosseum,” which could be considered Ford’s rendition of the epic poem, it being the lengthiest and most rich with complexities of narrative, analytical and lyrical forms. In “Colosseum” Ford underscores various forms of dichotomy; she utilizes both images of lightness and darkness to define destruction, where light may typically be avoided when reflecting on ruin. Ford incorporates both mythological allusions and realistic details throughout the poem. Additionally, the lyrical “I” in the poem implies the speaker is communicating through meditation, personal opinion or narrative; however, the voice also refers to antediluvian historical events, Roman arenas and the “ancient mayfly.” She recalls reading about the “fault line under Rome/that shook the theatre walls/slight quake by quake;” although this poem was written prior to Hurricane Katrina, one can surely find parallels of the fall of the Roman Colosseum, and the destruction of Katrina, and what was left both physically and metaphorically. Ford also shows the speaker’s vulnerability as she contemplates her own death and things about life she doesn’t understand: “There is no scientific evidence of consciousness/lasting outside the body. I think when I die/it will be completely.”
Ford travels through time throughout the collection, and although various moments in history are recalled as elegies, Ford remains present and resplendent within the deconstruction of each moment. Her voice is modern and thoughtful; in Colosseum we witness the fall of many, but without a doubt, we see a poet rise.
-Because Ford is an acclaimed poet, a technical master with a compelling voice, there are many reviews and articles on her biography and her profound collections, Colosseum and Deposition. Marick Press published her chapbook titled Storm in 2007. If you are interested in learning more and reading her compelling work, please check out the following links: Daily Planet, PoetsOrg, Blackbird, American Poetry Review, and an interview with SFstation.
~Reviewed by Nicole Edwards
Colosseum, Graywolf Press $15.00
Poet Katie Ford
Katie Ford is the author of Deposition and a chapbook, Storm. Individual poems have appeared in the Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and Seneca Review. She has received awards and grants from the Academy of American Poets and the PEN American Center and is the poetry editor of New Orleans Review. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, the novelist Josh Emmons.
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