Tag Archives: American poet Angela Consolo Mankiewicz

“Camelot or Haunted Eden” by American Poet Angela Consolo Mankiewicz

04 Sunday Mar 2018

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Lancelot_and_Guinevere_-_Herbert_James_Draper - c. 1890
Lancelot & Guinevere by Herbert James Draper (c.1890)
King Arthur’s Court – Camelot
Source: Wikipedia

 

My Poetry Corner March 2018 features the poem “Camelot or Haunted Eden” by American poet, Angela Consolo Mankiewicz (1944-2017). March 7th marks one year since she lost her battle with lung cancer, leaving behind her husband of forty-five years.

In August 2017, Richard Mankiewicz compiled a Limited Edition of his wife’s body of work in the collection The Poetry of Angela Consolo Mankiewicz. In the Foreword, he shares her farewell message to him in which she built upon the poem “Camelot or Haunted Eden,” first published in Summer 1989.

What words say Love the way I feel it? she asks in the opening lines of her farewell message. In the face of death, during this Horror of a year, their love is all that matters.

She then speaks of Gratitude for things born of your true Love… / Who would have thought Gratitude could be so pure, so wonderful…

She returns to the love, quoting from the featured poem, “Camelot or Haunted Eden,” but omitting the final stanza in which she had expressed her fear of him dying before she did. Life can be unpredictable.

In the first stanza, after over sixteen years together – when the poem was first published – Mankiewicz ponders a love that’s attentive to her needs and calms her fears, like a knight in armor, yet doesn’t suffocate or impede her to pursue her own dreams.

What is this love that rests inside his heart,
That succors me but lets me breathe apart?
This well from which I fetch a word, a hug,
A kiss that lets me live this day and shrug
Off demons that invade my artless brain;
This armor plate, this clasp without a chain. 

The day to day stresses of life can gnaw at any relationship. Happy the couple who help each other recover from incoming assaults with a willing ear, a hug, an encouraging word, as the poet shares in the second stanza.

This love that rocks the stress of everyday
Away from me and lightens my dismay.
This love that makes a lap for me to sink
Inside when worlds collide and I can’t think.
A love that sits with ready arms to hold
My weariness when I am feeling old. 

Yet, the greatest challenge to an enduring marriage is often our character flaws, whether the size of a lime or grapefruit, that can corrode a fragile relationship. In the last stanza of her farewell message, Mankiewicz expresses her good fortune in finding a lifelong partner who loves her with all her human frailty.  

A love that loves my pride and childish grins.
A love that knows my soul and shares my sins.
A love that brought me more than one can earn,
That only luck’s good fortune can discern. 

Camelot or Haunted Eden? Over the years, life-threatening health issues haunted their Eden. No marital relationship, even one that endures forty-five years, is perfect. Life has its pain and anxieties. What makes the difference is the love and gratitude that we sprinkle daily along the journey. Mankiewicz’s farewell message to her husband says it all.

To read the complete featured poem and learn more about the work of Angela Consolo Mankiewicz, go to my Poetry Corner March 2018.

 

Angela Consolo Mankiewicz: Her Magnificent & Eternal Obsession

02 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in Poetry, Uncategorized

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Richard & Angela 1972

 

My Poetry Corner April 2017 features “Another Love Poem: Even in Hell” by American poet, Angela Consolo Mankiewicz (1944-2017). Born in Brooklyn, New York, she moved – against her will – with her parents to Los Angeles at the age of fourteen. But the gods had other plans for her. In 1968, her path crossed that of Richard Mankiewicz, twelve years older, and altered the course of her life.

In “Writing Down the Words” (Istanbul Literary Review, September 2011 Edition), Angela ruminates:

I wonder if I will curse my father
for the even fewer words he said to me
of any value: have you considered the age difference?
Yes, I said, but nothing can be done about that.
No, he said, and it does not matter today,
but may when he’s older. Yes, I said,
but nothing can be done about that either.
No, he said. The end of my father’s wisdom,
the end of his words.
 Continue reading →

When a dear friend dies

19 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by in Relationships, United States

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When a dear friend dies…

Wine shared to hail the New Year
turns tepid water.

Springs of poetic wisdom
lost down a sinkhole.

Summer strolls along the beach
end at the ocean’s edge.

Mementos stoke nostalgia
amid falling leaves.

Rain erases footprints carved
along pathways uncharted.

For Angela Consolo Mankiewicz

Continue reading →

“Pantoum for Ferguson: 20 Miles a Day” Poem by Angela Consolo Mankiewicz

01 Sunday Mar 2015

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We Can't BreatheWe Can’t Breathe – Against Police Tyranny
Source: IFWEA

 

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, my Poetry Corner March 2015 features the poem “Pantoum for Ferguson: 20 Miles a Day” by American poet Angela Consolo Mankiewicz.

The modern pantoum is composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and the third lines of the next stanza. As you’ll notice in Mankiewicz’ pantoum, the repeated lines take on a slightly different meaning and punctuation.

The pantoum’s pattern of rhyme and repetition is the perfect poetic form for giving us the sense of the four-step forward and two-step backward movement of race relations in America. Continue reading →

“When the Pain Stopped” – Poem by Angela Consolo Mankiewicz

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Poetry, United States

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Trayvon Martin wearing a hoodieIn Memory of Trayvon Martin
Photo Credit: Madame Noire

 

In my Poetry Corner September 2013, I feature Part II of the three-part poem “When the Pain Stopped” by American poet, Angela Consolo Mankiewicz. Be forewarned. Angela has a way of getting under our skin. The images she conjures may be unsettling.

My Haiku poem “Did You Cry Out?” in memory of Trayvon Martin was inspired by a line in Angela’s poem. During the attack that ended his life, cries for help are audible in the background of the audio recording of the 9-1-1 call. The identity of the person yelling was never verified during his killer’s trial.

When I first read Angela’s chapbook, An Eye, published in 2006, I connected immediately with her poetry. In her long narrative poem, “Caiti,” she does not shy away from the raw, ugly emotions of a friend’s struggles with a daughter on crack.

Do you remember that day in September,
a couple of years ago?
4 months after you filled your belly
with pills, 6 months after you rid it
of a 2nd 5-monthold fetus, 2 years after you first
threatened your mother with murder,
4 years after you thrashed through the house,
slamming doors and crashing windows,
rolling into a ball of flailing arms and legs,
begging her to stop the pain sucking you into a whirlwind
she couldn’t pull you out of, anymore?

In Wired, published in 2001, her poem “Going Home Alone” poked at my open wound caused by a mother who clung to past hurts. Better for me to stay away and avoid a bitter tongue lashing.

You can always go home again,
you can’t not go home again
and again and again and again.
 
The trick is to stop
to pull out that sign
the one that says ENOUGH

Angela’s cancer poems tell other stories of her life while facing and beating cancer. She doesn’t hide behind tales of heroism. My favorite cancer poem is “Who Am I To Cry” from As If, published in 2008, and featured in my Poetry Corner June 2011. We know that our pain is nothing when compared to the sufferings of others in more dire conditions. But it’s our pain, our life. It’s okay for us to cry.

Her collection, Cancer Poems, published in 1995, is filled with angst in the face of her husband’s cancer diagnosis, surgery, and radiation treatment. Their love for each other is evident in every poem. In “August 26: Not Yet Grief,” her anguish seeps from the page.

Who do I run to if not to you? Bearing
this doom that is not yet grief, rumbling
through my body. Who, if not you, who have loved me
and held me and heard me; you, who assuage the pains
and anguish of being alive, you, who have given me
courage to face everything but this.

When the pains stop and we face death, what matters more than having loved and being loved?