Dressed in costumes to disguise their identity, people in rural communities would visit the home of newly married couples to offer their mock serenade, with horns, whistles, drums, and wild dancing. No well-wishers these charivari. Their purpose was to make fun of the young lovers, to remind them of what older, perhaps wiser people know, that marriage is not for the faint of heart. Charivari callers were especially cruel when there was an obvious age difference between the newlyweds.
Ilona Martonfi’s Charivari reminds us that after the wedding, the marriage isn’t always, or often, made in heaven. In this volume Martonfi returns us to her themes of the darker side of marriage, when couples would prefer to escape each other and perhaps join the charivari going on outside.
Ilona Martonfi is the author of Blue Poppy (Coracle Press, 2009), and Black Grass (Broken Rules Press, 2012). She is the founder of Montreal’s Yellow Door Reading Series and the Visual Arts Center Poetry and Prose Reading Series; Martonfi is also co-founder of Lovers and Others, now in its fifteenth year. In 2010 she won the Quebec Writers’ Federation Community Award.
Coracle Press (2013)
ISBN: 978-0-9918845-1-3
Printed in a limited edition of 60 copies, numbered and signed by the author.
Photo Credit
Photo is Wikimedia Creative Commons
Guest Author Bio
Ilona Martonfi
Ilona Martonfi Author of two poetry books, Blue Poppy, (Coracle Press, 2009.) Black Grass, (Broken Rules Press 2012). Published in various magazines, Vallum, Accenti, The Fiddlehead, Serai. Founder/producer of The Yellow Door and Visual Arts Centre Readings, co-founder of Lovers and Others. QWF 2010 Community Award.
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Charivari is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN