Corina Copp and THe Green Ray - Review by Tomm McCarthy

The evening will begin soon, the patrons are re-assured. Because right now, the event is running a little bit behind schedule. Not noticeably behind, it only runs behind enough to warrant a begging of the audiences forgiveness. Now that this is done, now that the audience’s feelings of boredom have been pre-emptively struck. They are allowed to sit back and relax, in the comfortable chairs of the Walter Reade Theatre in Lincoln Centre. They eat popcorn, drink watery soda. They laugh at each other’s jokes and patiently wait for the festivities to begin.

This event is part of the Print Screen series, a series of events that puts artists of written media (poets, novelists, musicians, etc.) up next to films that have inspired their work. Tonight the audience will be watching Le Rayon Vert a film by Eric Rohmer in its original french. And its introduction will be made by Corina Copp, a poet who has just published her book, The Green Ray with Ugly Duckling Presse.

Ms. Copp takes the stage. She angles the ear of the microphone so it is properly juxtaposed to her mouth and she begins to speak. She gives the audience a history of the title Le Rayon Vert/ The Green Ray. It was first a Jules Verne novel 1882 about a woman in Scotland trying to find the rare optical occurrence known as the green ray, or, the last ray of sunlight of an especially clear day. Upon seeing it one gains an enhanced perception of theirs and other’s true feelings. Then, in 1986, Eric Rohmer picked up the story and changed it. His film followed a Parisian woman trying to find a way to spend her vacation with others while feeling so empty inside and, towards the ending, resolving to find Verne’s green ray so she could gain emotional insight.

Now, there is Corina Copp’s The Green Ray. She reads from it. The poem is called “Pro Magenta” and it is the last poem in her book. It begins with the words “Antagonist, never let/ Go...”

Copp’s verse is halting to read, line breaks are so well placed that they are almost uncomfortable and tend to accelerate as one reads them. This accelerando is mimicked or reflected in Copp’s reading. Though she begins slow, and affording ample time to her line breaks, gradually she speaks faster; like silence is darkness and speech is sunrise.

Her verse reflects the emptiness of the two Le Rayon Vert, in a parenthetical part of the poem she writes/ says, “...I/ Believe in fantasy-/ Not resigning to/ Waters well in/ Easter spirit three/ Joyful leaps:” but that parenthetical ends with an abrupt “Non” a denial so like Delphine’s in the film when her friends give her an option to do something fun. 

And maybe the poem even ends on a hopeful and dramatic moment. The last stanza begins, “In France they know/ What it’s like/ What another’s/ Feeling when feeling” and if that’s true, maybe the solution is somewhere on the coast of France, where one can watch the last green ray of a clear sunny day, and finally know how they feel.