Lararium -by Ray Ball

Some time ago, while I was browsing Twitter, I saw that Variant Literature was searching for people to review Lararium by Ray Ball. Now, I’ll admit that the first thing that caught my eyes was the cover – if it hadn’t been so lovely, I’m not sure I would’ve stopped to see what it was about. The theme seemed interesting — among the other things, there were poems about climate change — but, I’m really picky with the poems I read, so I first went and looked up something else from the author. When I was sure I liked her style I contacted Variant Literature and they were super nice and sent me a copy to review.

When I got it and I started reading I both wanted to read it all at once and to never finish it. I settled for reading it in multiple sessions, reading some of the poems multiple times, and thinking I’d come back to it. I did. I’m doing it right now, with the excuse of writing this.

Some of the poems are about climate change, and with it about animals and nature, and they weren’t always easy for me to read. I don’t mean emotionally, I mean that they were actually challenging and it took me a couple of reads to understand exactly what they meant, but I fully believe that it added to the enjoyment of the chapbook. I’m not sure how to explain it, but it’s almost as if I decoded a puzzle. Like when you read a thriller and during the last pages you see all the pieces come together and you get that sense of satisfaction. It’s probably a really personal thing, I have no idea if anyone else experienced it, but it made appreciate the poems even more.
And it made me think about the author: if it’s hard for me to read, I can’t imagine how much care and thoughts she put into writing it. I really admire her.

Other poems were more personal, and I could really relate to some of this. One of my favorite ones is called Dendroctonus rufipennis, which, for those of you too lazy for an online search (believe me, I get it), is a species of bark beetle which destroys trees. And I won’t say what the poem talks about exactly because I fully believe you need to read it to understand, but I loved the last verses:
“[…] Smaller trees can
flourish in a forest
of ghosts, but that
doesn’t always mean
that they do.”
In general, I love the metaphors she uses and how they can show so much more than what it looks like the first time you’re reading it.

Another thing that caught my eyes was the use of references to Roman and Greek history/mythology. I absolutely love ancient history. So, the title being Lararium (latin word for the household shrine with figures of Lares, guardian deities), I expected something connected to this and wasn’t disappointed. The first poem talking about Pompeii and then Medusa would’ve sold the whole chapbook for me, maybe even if I hadn’t loved this much all the others.

I think at this point I covered what I wanted to tell you about. I could go on for a few more hundred words, because really, there’s so much in a few pages, and as I said I loved reading it, but I’ll stop here, because I said what’s important and I think you should read the chapbook itself to enjoy it.
Click here to check out their website and preorder the chapbook.
Then you can come back and let me know how much you liked it!

Also, it’s not exactly related to this chapbook but it kind of is because climate change: I’m using ecosia.org as a search engine, and it plants trees thanks to our searches, so maybe consider using it as well? It’s not an ad or anything, but it’s nice that we’re able to use something we always do anyway to do something good.