POETRY REVIEW: “Event Horizon” by Valentina Cano
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- February 11, 2014
Event Horizon
Valentina Cano
2013 mgv2>publishing, 25 pages
In her debut poetry collection, Event Horizon, Valentina Cano paints with dark and light free verse to create short yet powerful poems which she terms as “Debris”. These illuminations and dislocations give insight into the sometimes troubled, but self-encouraging mind of a promising young poet.
In poems such as “Regarding Anxiety” and “Compulsions”, Cano explores the mental confines of worry, anxiety, depression, and pain. Meanwhile, her thoughts find way to escape the dark “Disorders”, allowing the self to immerge triumphant. This theme is illustrated in “Compulsions”:
. . . My mind cowered
and pushed anything to hide behind.
To hide from the marching,
swaying, though
full like a tick.
A scream turned the night into day,
the thought into a concrete wall.
Valentina Cano’s poetry is intensely personal, very moving, and well worth exploring. She summarizes the collection with the last verses from “An Ill Head, Dreaming”:
If I could find it,
this hospital that quarantines shadows,
then I think
I could learn to breathe again.
Gulping air in a waterfall of light.
Recommended.
Catch her reading here: Valentina Cano
