Sophia Hussain in The Poetry Project
In the #267-Winter 2022 publication of The Poetry Project, Sophia Hussain's reflection on Etel Adnan's work is featured in the section of "Etel Adnan Remembrances"!
BCNM's Events Coordinator and Office Manager encountered Adnan's writing for the first time at the beach, and she found her passion in her writing about Mount Tamalpais because "it is an initiation into something, a type of great love, collected in impressions" instead of nature writing. In terms of Sophia's review, Etel Adnan's writing takes us with her as she drives around in circles to catch its particular glow or an uncanny orange green, a soft and bright forcefield.
Quoted from Sophia:
"Instead of opposites we find obsession and reaching and a type of mimicked, seamless morphology; the sea and Mount Tam plunge into each other, tied in syncretic motion like a solar system, full of weight and mystery. These elemental shifts never lose sight of the human, and even the political prisoners, on this land. The way George Jackson’s voice on the radio slips in. In Etel’s writing, she asks: “Did they forget that in the summer of 1970 the white man went to the moon and the Red Man went to Alcatraz?” In Etel’s writing, the bay in Sausalito becomes the Mediterranean Sea of her childhood, and to look at the sea is to become what one is."
To read the full review, please visit here!