Reviewed by Anne Graue

Rarely does myth coincide so neatly with the present as it does in Katherine Factor's A Sybil Society, a collection of poems that sews metaphors and allusions together seamlessly so that the end product is a feminist nod to the goddesses and prophetesses of mythology, who paved the way for women to conjure their own realities and find their ways out of the labyrinth using their own threads.

The different spelling of sybil from the ancient sibyl denotes a modern movement into culture that is sometimes pop and sometimes passed down from ancestors. Factor's collection embraces all of culture in subverting ideas about women and their power, applying mythical stories to modern-day tropes of womanhood and what it means to be female. The collection's title poem does this with lyrical lines in small stanzas that tell the story of prophets with divine insight as they "travail the countryside / offering psychic services for a small fee." They share a few of their methods as they interpret and predict and then admit to their sisters that "we're all scrying // interpreting the emails / of sacrificial victims / then consulting certain message texts." This juxtaposition of past and present, myth and reality, sends a message of might and potency.

In the poem, "An Ariadne," the theme of empowerment is strong in the voice of the woman who saved Theseus from the Minotaur; she brings a double-headed axe to "this place" that is "all about being lost, but she darns "a precocious thread in / a bull cabinet." She tells us "I create / as all get out // as lady honey / of this palace," and we can take her at her word. The symbols and allusions throughout this poem mesh with a few modern references to a freeway, a vision board, and a trending codex, and we can be certain that there are ancient princesses among us.

There is a beseeching message in "W*i*T*C*h Please" in which a collective "we" asks her to "Come back, we need you," then goes on to remind her of how they've survived throughout history when ". . . later the labyrinth / became a club complete w/ / a renovated dancing ground." They adapted and found their place in society where they also found "all the tincture / & a glyph-deciphering kit." In this poem, the witch population made it through centuries and is now calling for one of their own to come back, reaching into folklore and mythology to help themselves now.

There is another entreaty in "Aliens, Do Arrive Pronto," which is filled with references to neolithic sites and civilizations that may lay claim to extraterrestrial connections or origins. This poem fits neatly with the others in the collection as the speaker pleads with numerous seers, priestesses, and fortune tellers of myth and connects them to the ills of civilization in a way that proclaims what a travesty we've made of the earth and its gifts. The speaker in this poem addresses the different alien possibilities as if in a meeting: "We never collected / yr minutes, Pleiadians, but welcome. / Remote Minoans, hello." With apt references to the Seven Sisters and the ancient people of the island of Crete, the poem seems to cry out for a remedy that may be psychoactive in a bowl that is referred to as a spaceship. Factor embraces all possibilities in this sonnet-like piece that appears near the end of the collection.

Factor's poems include references to Satyrs, Florence Nightingale, Delphi, Centaurs, and Joan d'Arc, all layered with meaning and searching for the right metaphors to make them relevant to today. She has also included "Animous   Uni State," an erasure of the Declaration of Independence, that proclaims connections among earth, nature, God, truth, and alien life. This makes perfect sense in this collection of poems that consistently relates myth to present-day realities and transforms them into a new belief system that makes room for numerous theories, suppositions, and eyewitness accounts. Transforming civilization is essentially what the creators of the Declaration had in mind, and now it may be time for another upheaval. Factor's collection addresses possibilities for that upheaval and clears a transitional path forward.

The vocabulary of our current climate has also found its place amidst language both mythical and modern, and the pandemic inserts itself as another character in Factor's poems, one to be reckoned with in a collection that mesmerizes and entertains with consistent allusion and metaphor. In the poems "The Virus About Us" and "Tripod Lockdown," we may feel we know what to expect from the titles and that poems about the pandemic will expectedly show up in new poetry collections. Lines such as "Many believe this spell accentuates the end" and "Plutarch thought / emissions / weaken wordplay" might challenge our expectations, but delving into these poems will allow their many layers of meaning to emerge.

We might also be surprised by the poems "Lady with a Lamp" or "The Age of Nefarious" when the pandemic shows itself subversively as Factor allows the virus to infect wherever it finds a way, as viruses do. The "Lady with a Lamp" is Florence Nightingale, who tells us

I visit the sick as instructed, lantern in my hand, firing lamplight to
illuminate the rooms—
stereoscopic ceiling, a ship flaring Exit if they exhume. Fire a virus
I can burn through.

This poem returns us to the historical truth that there have always been healers on many battlefields. Similarly, "The Age of Nefarious" is every age, and humanity is always at odds with greed. The speakers in this poem urge their audience:

Hurry up vax up
so that for realz

we can go clubbing
& keep hustling Aquarians
to light the fires.

In both of these poems, Factor's speakers reach back into history to foretell the future and advise the present. In a final act of self-love, Factor's poems inform us that we may overcome civilization's calamities by keeping our wits about us as we travel through social media posts, texts, and tweets that distract us from human suffering in favor of what we can get with a few clicks. We must also heed messages from mythology and our past where we can find a balance between life and death, with a doula for each.