"Cynthia Cruz's latest collection, Sweet Repetition, deftly embraces cyclicality and the accumulation of meaning over time. Words, phrases, and titles echo throughout this book-length sequence of poems, forming new constellations with each passing encounter. This lyrical conceit is not merely repetition for repetition's sake, though, but is instead political. The structure of repetition is inherently revolutionary: Repetition revisits and revises, altering the course of history by nature of its movement.By centering repetition as a structural device, Cruz invites the specter of Sigmund Freud to hover over the book-namely, his 1914 paper "Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through." In Freudian analysis, the things we repress-what we know but don't wantto know-reappear in the actions we repeat. This form of unknowing, of remaining unaware of what our unconscious knows, is to Cruz a form of knowing in and of itself. The minimalist lyricism of Sweet Repetition invites its readers to experience such knowing in real time and to recognize pulsing, unforeseen beauty in the recurrence of images, archetypes, and obsessions"--
Poetry that centers its movement on repetition—orbiting, unwinding, and returning.
Integrating Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, and the works of other poets, this collection explores narrative through abstraction and considers how repetition holds both the power to constrain and to generate. Freud explains how what we repress—what we know but don’t want to acknowledge—reappears in our actions through repetition. Through slips of the tongue or selective memory, we engage with what our unconscious knows, finding knowledge through unknowing. The psychoanalytic session is centered on bringing forth repressed knowledge through acts of unknowing—speaking without thinking—which brings one closer to recognizing an obscured desire.
The poetry of Sweet Repetition works in ways akin to the psychoanalytic act. These pulsing poems follow the definitions of the word revolution—to revolve, change direction, unroll, unwind, happen again, repeat, orbit around. Images and words reappear in the motion of Cynthia Cruz’s poems, inviting us into their revolutionary, political, and cumulative effects.
