Francesca
Woodman
[September 16,
1981]
Soon I will become
something other than Francesca Woodman, loving daughter, passionate lover,
aspiring photographer. Soon, I may become a film of cobwebs floating in the air
in clear, calm weather. A thin, translucent angel. I wonder if angels know how
to read music.
(Split)
Further
from
Benjamin Niespodziany’s Piżama Press is the dos-a-dos dual collection
Split / Game of Little Deaths (2026) by
Romanian poet Réka Nyitrai. Two books,
packaged as a single unit, each composed as suites of short, tight lyrics that
lean into the abstract, providing both solid foundations and surreal twists. “I’m
waiting for the lark’s eggs to hatch / and the moon to answer my letter.”
Nyitrai writes, to open the poem “With Lark’s Eggs in My Ear,” in the
Game
of Little Deaths section, “I lock myself inside a mirror / where music
played on pianos / still lives.” As the website description of the collection offers:
“The book is designed to be flipped, featuring one side with diaristic,
experimental prose (‘Split’) and the other with a surreal, mystifying
collection of poems (‘Game of Little Deaths’.” The poems across the first of
these two,
Split, are composed through a kind of abstract precision,
offering titles that are concrete and specific, often with accompanying dates,
allowing the poems to veer off without fear of losing ground. On the other
hand, the poems of
Game of Little Deaths work through a foundation of
logic from what seems a title-prompt, expanding across a narrative stretch. If
Split
holds poems with narrative anchors that ripple across the music of the
lines,
Game of Little Deaths are lyrical bursts, providing a
counterpoint of form and logic, providing the difference between form and
approach.
Either
way, these are fantastic poems that require you sit with them for a while,
stretch your legs. Get comfortable. Explore the nuance of what might be
happening.
In Bed with Picasso
The sad seeds of blue times
swim in our mouth.
A soft hand unbuttons the
sky.
I see an angel riding on
a flower.
The smell of burnt snow
wakes the stars.
(Game of Little Deaths)
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