Sixth Finch - Winter 2014 - Mathias Svalina - WASTOID
Mathias Svalina gives me great anxiety. At all times anxiety. I read his Destruction Myth so long after any sensible reader would have read it. And I was fascinated by it and anxietied by it. Yes, the title says DESTRUCTION yet what I read inside are creation stories. What am I supposed to do when my mind seizes, Mr. Svalina? I was looking for the very, very complex optimism and certainty that resides in a creation myth. I want that to be toyed with. And tickled. Mr. Svalina, you dirty dog, you exploited the creation myth and laid it out for destruction. And maybe I’m too precious about creation myths.
But this is why I anxiety when I read a Mathias Svalina poem. I am afraid he will exploit what is precious to me. Do I like these poems in Sixth Finch, then, because I have a relationship with “Wastoid”s? I don’t think that’s it. It’s more about the stretched idea. The convoluted logic getting pulled taut and even tauter after that, so an idea, maybe of manhood, or loving a man who you want to know is so full of manhood it is an unmistakable quality that compels the speaker. With a final idea underlying it all that feeling compelled is like love.
And I know reading these poems that all the world and stylings of Destruction Myth is right here in these Wastoid poems. And maybe what Svalina is actually toying with is love rather than creation. Alas. To me, I like seeing contradiction and compulsion toyed with.
Sixth Finch - Winter 2014 - Mathias Svalina - WASTOID
