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The Future of the Past
Dec. 2nd, 2024 11:52 amPollack, Rachel, 2009, Fortune's lovers: a book of tarot poems: A Midsummer Night's Press, www.amidsummernightspress.com, ISBN-13 978-0-9794208-4-9, $9.95, small-format perfect-bound paperback, 42 pages.
Most of Rachel Pollack's 30 books are nonfiction and half are about the tarot. I have not read any of them. She has won awards for both fiction and nonfiction books. No other poetry books are listed inside my copy of Fortune's lovers. This book contains 12 poems. No prior publication credits are given, so I'm guessing they are all new.
Of course the tarot includes more than 12 cards; there are more than 12 of the major arcana. "Fortune's lovers" samples the tarot, it does not encompass it. Most poems refer to particular cards, but the penultimate poem, "Tarot pi," is the result of an exercise in which words relating to major arcana are assigned to numerals and replace the first hundred digits of the irrational number pi. The result is interesting, but any meaning it contains is of the same order as the faces that our minds insist on finding in any complex nonpatterned image.
Another oddity about this book is that the first and last poems have the same title: "Fool." The last poem is a sort of postscript or conclusion in the form of a wise saying about "the gate."
This leaves poems 1 through 10, which refer to or spin off from major arcana, but do not describe them. In "Fool" a group of New York tarot devotees meet to consider the meaning of this card
of "fou," madness, how
the bright beautiful boy at the birth of the world
was once a schizophrenic homeless guy
As always, a demonstration is far more instructive than just talking. As this poem demonstrates.
"Magician" is not about Merlin, although there is a poem about Merlin in this book. Hermes, father of alchemy and grandfather of chemistry, is the magician here.
"High priestess" is about the job of high priestess, and poses the question: is that a job you want? (Trick question.)
She can only stare,
and look impressive,
and hope they don't expect
some blessing or curse or detailed instructions for
making candles or killing goats
In "Emperor" a lesson is learned. 'Do as I say, not as I do' is all very well, but how many children follow this dictum anyway?
Her father, the all-powerful King,
dropped his pipe and newspaper,
and set her on his lap, where he
wiped away her tears.
The place of the tarot in the modern world may be a small and dusty corner, but in this book Rachel Pollack has done her best to show how these ancient symbols are relevant still. You could do far worse than to take Fortune's lover as your companion on a journey to explore the mythic roots of everyday life.
Most of Rachel Pollack's 30 books are nonfiction and half are about the tarot. I have not read any of them. She has won awards for both fiction and nonfiction books. No other poetry books are listed inside my copy of Fortune's lovers. This book contains 12 poems. No prior publication credits are given, so I'm guessing they are all new.
Of course the tarot includes more than 12 cards; there are more than 12 of the major arcana. "Fortune's lovers" samples the tarot, it does not encompass it. Most poems refer to particular cards, but the penultimate poem, "Tarot pi," is the result of an exercise in which words relating to major arcana are assigned to numerals and replace the first hundred digits of the irrational number pi. The result is interesting, but any meaning it contains is of the same order as the faces that our minds insist on finding in any complex nonpatterned image.
Another oddity about this book is that the first and last poems have the same title: "Fool." The last poem is a sort of postscript or conclusion in the form of a wise saying about "the gate."
This leaves poems 1 through 10, which refer to or spin off from major arcana, but do not describe them. In "Fool" a group of New York tarot devotees meet to consider the meaning of this card
of "fou," madness, how
the bright beautiful boy at the birth of the world
was once a schizophrenic homeless guy
As always, a demonstration is far more instructive than just talking. As this poem demonstrates.
"Magician" is not about Merlin, although there is a poem about Merlin in this book. Hermes, father of alchemy and grandfather of chemistry, is the magician here.
"High priestess" is about the job of high priestess, and poses the question: is that a job you want? (Trick question.)
She can only stare,
and look impressive,
and hope they don't expect
some blessing or curse or detailed instructions for
making candles or killing goats
In "Emperor" a lesson is learned. 'Do as I say, not as I do' is all very well, but how many children follow this dictum anyway?
Her father, the all-powerful King,
dropped his pipe and newspaper,
and set her on his lap, where he
wiped away her tears.
The place of the tarot in the modern world may be a small and dusty corner, but in this book Rachel Pollack has done her best to show how these ancient symbols are relevant still. You could do far worse than to take Fortune's lover as your companion on a journey to explore the mythic roots of everyday life.
