Synkroniciti is honored to welcome back poet Naomi Ruth Lowinsky of California with three marvelous poems addressing multiple aspects of recovery. In “To Name the Ineffable,” Naomi addresses her younger self. “I remember you in that scared/ rabbit hole of a marriage your hideout from all the world’s terrors/ so good at playing the “little woman” until riptides toss you/ from laughter to tears revealing your wild undertow/ Your husband the doctor names your condition/ Hysteria.” Through a process of seeking, she individuates, recovering herself and embracing her gift for writing, so central to her being, as she healed from years of crushing compliance. She also found a partner who respected and cherished her. “I remember his dark eyes that glint from the beginning of time/ and you mesmerized as he tells you his dream of diving/ into the river to follow a nymph because he is curious/ about who she might be.” As they age there is a sense of wonder and self that deepens in mystery and meaning. Naomi’s internal spaces help us slow down and take in the rich imagery and alliterative music of her lyrical poetic world.
“In the Eerie Surround of Covid” recalls the pandemic. “How long/ since you’ve been in the Green World? You force yourself out/ of Zoom rectangles into the glorious curves/ of the hills gold of the sun blue.” It was a terrifying time, something no one alive had experienced, at least not on a global scale. And yet, it also brought renewal in its wake, as people questioned the value of success as defined by society. “That rumbling you hear comes/ from the ones who’ve been left out of plenty/ in the hurry up world that used to be/ yours.” Naomi draws our attention back to the voice of the people, which we heard so clearly when the machine of modern life was temporarily silenced. Her words are those of an oracle, intentional and resonant, eliciting visceral and cerebral responses. She dares speak the truth she has been given.
Naomi is adept at connecting the personal with the mythological, tying modern human experience with archetypes reinterpreted. “The Miscarriage of Demeter’s Rule,” one of our “Recovery” poetry contest finalists, is an outstanding example of this, as Naomi invokes the Greek myth of Demeter, the goddess of the Earth, and her daughter Kore (or Persephone), stolen away by the god of the Underworld. She calls on all of us to witness suffering, that of nature: “For the earth/ is our bleeding Kore her rainforests raped/ by bulldozers her belly disemboweled/ by greed” and that of humanity under the boot of tyrants: “How dare they allow all this weeping of mothers whose babies/ are lost fragments of flesh and bone? Or the sobbing of children/ whose mothers are buried under the rubble or the bombing of olive trees/ torn away from their roots.” Naomi reminds us that the earth and the feminine have always been known for powers of healing and we would do well to reverence them in the hopes that all we love may be renewed.
Read Naomi’s transcendent poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Recovery” 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.