Nina Murray

In the textual center of her book, Alcestis in the Underworld: Poems (Richmond, VA : Circling Rivers, 2019), Nina Murray presents the reader with a comedic-like, musical round:

what we remember is what we believe
they don't believe in things that we remember
they do remember things we don't believe
and we can speak the things they don't remember

Unlike the familiar 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' or 'Three Blind Mice' we sense a loss of harmonic resolution, a missed beat, which is emblematic of our show more present day in which a multitude of personal communication devices and mass media networks leave the individual alone and solipsistic. To speak is to be misunderstood. Memory is skepticism.

Alcestis, daughter of Pelias, is given in marriage to the man who can drive around a race course a chariot yoked with the awkward team of boar and lion. King Admetus of Thessaly meets the requirement and wins his wife Alcestis, but only with the intercession of Apollo and the help of Hercules. Admetus, flush with victory, forgot to render sacrifices to Artemis, goddess of the hunt, protectoress of animals. Artemis' anger at this oversight was mitigated only with the intercession of her twin sibling Apollo. The final agreement was that when the day of Admetus's death came, he should be spared only on condition that a member of his family would volunteer to die in his stead. That day came sooner than expected and cowardly Admetus went to his parents begging them to die for him, both refusing. It was Alcestis the devoted wife who agreed to die for her husband, taking poison and descending to the underworld. Before the god of the underworld, Hades, could receive his new arrival, Hercules, a guest in Admetus' house, who learned of this tragic event from one of Admetus' servants, took it upon himself to go to the underworld and rescue Alcestis and bring her back home. Euripides play, Alcestis, is the main source of this legend of the cowardly king and his spouse the ironic hero, who in the imagination of Nina Murray, will speak to us of things heard and seen and remembered in our time.

Murray's “memory theater” opens with a set of paragraphs (I- VI): orthodoxy, domesticity, divination, competence, verdure, and conveyance. Images within this set range from Ronald Reagan in Western garb to Lebron James' 32 points in a Cavaliers vs. Celtics game to a passenger in a vehicle listening to a “tonal variation in F-major [ . . . ] a whiff of marijuana smoke [ . . . ] the doctor on the radio [saying] caffeine is the second-most traded substance in the world.” Our experience of memory theater continues with 'VII. Alcestis at the feast' in Moscow at Tsartsyno Palace, built at the direction of Catherine the Great in 1776, its “promenade resplendent in lipstick-gloss tulips / the fountain's projections timed to the last generation's beloved French pop tunes.”

Then three 'surveillance detection reports' – a meeting with a professor at a coffee house with others nearby one with his cell phone on a table pointed toward the professor; two women on a cruise ship that passes the Kremlin port side talking of “corruption in the construction sector and the coming flu.” and in a hotel room with a hidden camera, “eyes that watch the watcher”.

'Moscow metro' opens with the observation that “we are no longer an audience but a crowd of spectators” that tacitly agree not to hear the words one can see being mouthed. The closing image is of a man leaning over a bouquet of flowers, “small petals tangled like hair,” An image that calls to mind Ezra Pound's poem a century ago about the Paris metro: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd: / Petals on a wet, black bough.” More images follow: 'the Sapsan express', the high-velocity train between Moscow and St. Petersburg, presents one with “metaphors to fill time on the train / in the speeding cocoon / of suspended purpose / a blur: a feather twirls / in the locomotive's wake” ; In 'St. Petersburg / October, 2016' one sees “The Admiralty's spire / the gilded needle / of the imperial compass” as an oblique reference to the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The memory theater continues with 'VIII. vexillology: variation on a theme by Mark Strand' with images of pennants, chevrons, ribbons, and “the banner on the metro wall in coagulated drops of scarlet mosaic: Lenin's bellicose ghost.” And 'IX. Alcestis discovers the hierarchy of Soviet republics' in which our narrator says, “I am five and ethnically ambiguous: dark eyes, wide cheekbones, but indisputably Ukrainian and thus not classifiable as Gypsy, or Asiatic. [. . .] I'm delighted – exactly until I see the girl in the Russian costume: she's blonde, and has down-trimmed satin sleeves, a splendid crown like a flattened onion dome, in glitter and gold.” And 'X. Alcestis reviews George Washington's Rules of Civility' giving particular attention to the following maxims: “Walk not when others stop / Spit not in the Fire / Sleep not when others Speak / Shift not yourself in the Sight of others, nor Gnaw the nails, Shake not the head, rowl [roll] the eyes, wry not the mouth / [. . .] tell not your dreams / Speak not in an unknown Tongue.”

Our glimpses of the poet's 'memory theater' continue in part Two with allusions to John Cage's early work, “4'33”” which is timed duration of a musician's appearance on stage in which no sounds are played on any instrument and the audience hears only the background sound of silence; to St. Nina [Nino] who brought Christianity to the Georgian kingdom in the Fourth Century; indirectly to poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko in 'at Zima Junction, 1943' the poet's birthplace midway along the 6000-mile long Trans-Siberian Railroad between Moscow and Vladivostok; painter Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky and designer Leon Bakst “himself blonde and blue-eyed / bloused and bewhiskered [. . .] banned from St. Petersburg for the stain of his blood.”

Part Three of what by now may be considered a long poem, as well as an omnium-gatherum of separate poems, opens with an epigraph by Seamus Heaney, “And after the commanded journey, what? / Nothing significant, nothing unknown. / A gazing out from far away, alone.” The poet gives us a brief sense of resolution with 'Alcestis returns' as “a woman in a taxidermed hide / that must be donned to soothe the skittish.” The memory theater continues with XIII. Dogs, XIV. The forest of things, and XV. Your secrets.” But this resolution is short lived as the reader is left with a feeling that there may be more to follow.

Alcestis in the Underworld is in a tradition of poetry that informs and teaches as well as delights. William Carlos Williams' Paterson, Charles Olson's Maximus, Guy Davenport's Flowers and Leaves come to mind. This reader looks forward to more poems from Nina Murray. show less

Nina Murray takes on the likeness of Alcestis, the Greek legend who agreed to die in place of her husband, who went into the underworld, and who was rescued by Hercules, as a way of structuring this book of poems.

The book is in three parts, maybe relating to Alcestis’ time before, in, and returned from the land of the dead. This land may be Russia, Ukraine, Chicago, or some unnamed frozen forest, all of which are mentioned and have been part of the author's life.

I find Murray’s show more poetry, approachable, easy to read - not that I understand everything on the first or second reading, or that I’m always willing to research places and words and references that would make them clearer. But when I guess or wonder at the meaning of a line, I feel confident that the poet is not playing tricks on me.

I don’t keep many books that I’ve read, but plan to hold onto this one. show less

I've enjoyed this book of poetry, with Nina Murray's observations on life. Some of the poems are her Memory Theater weaving their way through the volume. One of the poems "collection need", obviously Moscow, could be any city with skateboarders which maybe disturb a middle class woman with their erratic swoops, but has a fetching quality about it. Lviv, January 2017, comments about history in cedar tree rings where unknowledge is perdition, but just look at the palimpsest of series. "for L. show more B." comments a backdoor way to get travel out of aBaltic country at the height of the Iron Curtain. Murray's poems are reworked memories developed in unexpected ways. show less

I usually do not read poetry, but this title jumped out at me. Simply Beautiful! I am truly in awe of Murray's way with words and I empathize with her and her plight. I did not expect to be hit with such an emotional response to her work.