Michelle Ortega explores Paris in place and in memory
We were there for an anniversary trip—Paris in the springtime. It’s a beautiful city, but it has its quirks. The museum workers were staging wildcat strikes to protest government pension changes. The government didn’t care. The tourists did. The Louvre and other cultural institutions might or might not be open, and they might suddenly close when they were open (this happened to Versailles the day after we visited). Our hotel concierge did his best to keep guests informed, but there was no way to tell for sure until you arrived.
What the wildcat strikes taught us to do was to be flexible in the extreme. We discovered the Museum of the Middle Ages (“the Cluny”), with its famous “Lady and the Unicorn” tapestry. The Rue des Martyrs was three blocks from our hotel, and it was like a miniature of every Paris stereotype—the bakery, the coffee shop, the flower shop, the wine shop, people doing their shopping with baguettes in their arms. The Au Petite Riche restaurant (opened 1854) with its surly French waiters quarantined us in a side room with two other couples—an elderly couple from Salisbury in England and a honeymooning pair from Australia. They probably thought they were isolating their French diners from the boorish Anglos; instead, they turned our meal into a party and a treasured memory.
Poet Michelle Ortega has had a different Paris experience, or at least what she writes about in When You Ask Me, Why Paris? reflects a different experience. It’s the Paris of both place and memory, the hints of Paris you stumble over in New York City and even in your own hometown. It’s that cup of coffee that reminds you of the shop near the Basilica of Sacre Coeur in Montmartre. It’s the pain you feel when you see Notre Dame Cathedral burning, the dark gothic church haunted by candle flames now turned into one huge candle flame. It’s the smile on your face as you watch the children play in the Luxembourg Gardens.
Ortega writes about all of these and more. Paris is a city that has worked its way into mind and her heart, and once it’s there, it remains. She writes with a close, keen eye. This isn’t the Paris of the tourist brochures; she writes of the Paris of the lived experience. And art and what it represents seems to be everywhere.
Revival at the Hôtel Biron
Musée Rodin, Paris
I had never known the passion
Rodin lifted from stone into light—
contours like silk embrace, whisper
in shadows; kneel flesh before flesh,
holy; gather energy between palms,
a universe. I wander room after room
until I find The Hand of God on
a wooden pedestal, close enough
to touch; I turn the piece slowly, see
the sinews, knuckles and fingernails
of the Master hand, and his children,
still part of the earth, not fully formed,
but held—I lay under his chisel as
he lifts me from stone into light.
She looks for stories in the 18th arrondissement. She stands on the Pont Alexandre III over the Seine after a storm at midnight. She takes day trips as well, like to Monet’s house and museum in Giverny, inspired by the artist, she studies the water at three times of the day. And she takes another day trip to visit Van Gogh’s room at L’Auberge Revoux, the last place he lived before his death.
Michelle Ortega
Ortega previously published two chapbooks, Don’t Ask Why and Tissue Memory. She served at Tweetspeak’s Poet Laura from 2023 to 2024. Her poetry has been published in such journals as Tiferet Journal, Exit 13, Snapdragon: A Journal of Healing, Platform Review, Shot Glass Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Rust + Moth, Humana Obscura, Stillwater Review, and others. Her work has also been included several anthologies, such as Earthsong: A Nature Poems Experience, How to Write a Form Poem, and Casual, all by T.S. Poetry Press; New Jersey Bards Poetry Review 2023 and 2024; and I Tried Not to Write by SnapDragon. She also co-edited the collaborative journal Like Waves Through Flesh. A speech-language pathologist, she is the founder of her own private practice, Communicare Ltd. Inc.
When You Ask Me, Why Paris? is a love letter to the city and its art, culture, buildings, and history. You wander the poems like you wander the streets, finding something of interest on every block. You happen upon the unexpected. This is a love letter, yes, a love letter that could only be written by a poet who, like Ortega, loves her subject.
Photo by Val H, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.
How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.
“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”
—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish
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Bethany R. says
“You wander the poems like you wander the streets, finding something of interest on every block. You happen upon the unexpected.” Michelle Ortega has a great eye for detail and perspective in her photography and poetry. Thanks for this review.
Michelle Ortega says
Thank you, Bethany, as always for your kind words!
Michelle Ortega says
Thank you Glynn, for this review! And good for you, learning to flex when the chaos ensues. I find that’s when you discover the best parts of Paris, around the corner and down a different street, with unexpected company. This chapbook is a love letter, indeed, and I hope it reaches the heart of fellow travelers, wherever they roam.