Little Arias

"Hypomnema is a Greek word for which there is no equivalent in English, commonly translated as "note" or even "notebook. For Michel Foucault, and for Kristen Case, hyponemata is a "material record of things read, heard, or thought" to help "establish a relationship of oneself with oneself." While only the final section of Case's beguiling Little Arias bears the title "Hypomnema," the concept serves as an ordering principle for the entire collection; itself a recording of quotes, ideas, observations, and exercises the poet has assembled to help bring the self into right relation with language, knowledge, the world, and perhaps most elusively, the self itself. Divided into six dissimilar but related sections, Little Arias, simultaneously draws on and problematizes the linguistic roots of aria. On one hand Case's tight poems (almost always delivered in the first person) do feel like small songs sung inwardly and quietly between the symbol crashes of the wide world and its chorus of voices. However, where operatic arias are all about the solo, Case prefers the duo. Her arias enter into conversation with philosophers, writers, children, and most often, memory. Memory is both self and not-self, both voice and not-voice; and yet, as poets, we re-make it all the time. Case explores this concept masterfully in the elegantly haunting "Miscarriage" and "Being with One Absent." But she is at her best when mixing memory and influence in the quote-inspired segment of twelve poems, entitled "Twelve Sentences." Austere and loving, monistic and dialogic, the poems of Little Arias are more than mere songs, they are recordings designed to endure."--Dean Rader "Kenyon Review" (1/1/2016 12:00:00 AM)