Little Arias

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.