Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome back poet Naomi Ruth Lowinsky of California with two powerful poems engaging with the dark political and cultural currents that are resurfacing in our time. “It Came Upon Us Like “Der Erlkönig” connects a poem by Goethe, set to music by many composers, most famously Schubert, with those currents. Goethe related the story of a father, galloping home across freezing lands with his son when the King of the Fairies appears and whispers to the child. As the father reaches home, the boy dies in his arms. It’s an ominous myth about innocence assailed by supernatural power–power that should not exist. Masterfully interweaving past, present and myth, Naomi likens this to the children slain in Gaza: “What’s become of our people? When did we turn into killers/ of women and children?” She laments that the ideology of Hitler is renewing itself, with new tyrants taking the place of the old. Genocide is monstrous, inexcusable, no matter who engages in it. It should not exist.
“Alien Nation”, runner -up in our “Dreams” poetry contest, is a lament for the America that welcomed the immigrant desiring a better life. Naomi asks whether that America was a mirage or if the fabric of our country has been altered. “Am I the alien or are you O land of my birth? Since you broke/ your promise to women our freedom to choose then yanked us back/ into bondage How can I trust you?” The style is rich and reminiscent of Walt Whitman, who is invoked later in the poem, while the perspective is distinctly feminine. Naomi mourns the loss of freedom, the driving dream of the immigrant, the safety of school children. Our weather is becoming devastating and technology rips at the fabric of a society that seems to have lost its heart. What can we do to shore up the America that, flawed as she was, inspired people around the world?
Naomi’s use of interior spacing remains matchless–through it we capture the cant and shape of her voice and thought, creating verse that breathes and pauses to collect itself before plunging into the depths of the soul.
Read Naomi’s passionate poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Dreams” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Naomi Ruth Lowinsky writes under the influence of her Muse, better known as The Sister from Below. This sister meanders from waking life to dream life, from the land of the living to the underworld, where ancestors hold forth about the agonies of history and the mysteries of soul. She believes that poetry is at once a musical and a mystical art, that words carry the imprint of poetic lineage, and that in poetry the Spirit of the Times and the Spirit of the Depths must commune with each other. With her help, Lowinsky has recently published her sixth book of poems, Your Face in the Fire.