I got absurdly drunk and read (in some cases re-read, thank you very much you judgemental fuckers) many poems from Jezzy Wolf'e's debut collection Monstrum Poetica, which I roughly translated as "Poems about Monsters". This is what my thoughts were.
Poems about monsters are fucking rad. i don't care who you are. Matt Betts proved that when he won an award for writing a poem about how pissed off Godzilla's girlfriend must be.
Yeah, I'm drunk. That doesn't mean that I don't have taste. Stop judging me, bright white screen!!!
Fuck, can this bitch write.
General note: I really dig the introduction pieces for each section of this book. First off, they give some sense of Jezzy's particular approach to these monsters. Second, they help provide some background for those of us who may not know what a Melonhead or Each-uisge is. Pretty fucking helpful.
Specific side: I promise to do an actual review in here somewhere.
"By Blood"
I jumped on this one because the form itself attacked me from the page. Concrete poetry has long fallen out of fashion. Some call it a style of children, likely because they lack the skill of those same children they mock. Making an idea fit a physical form is fucking hard when you are just molding clay to you whims. When you have to make words fit that form and try to keep a sense to it all… well, that is some tough shit.
Yet, "By Blood" does this. It gives the rancor and terror of dealing with an Asafarit while lulling us with the gentle form we have come to expect of it. A form reminiscent of I Dream of Jeannie and bright blue Robin Williams that hides flame and rage and trickery. That last line is such an important warning.
"Dead Zone"
The cycle here is not so much of visual form, but of questions. A returning "What If?" that nags along the view that the Mothman of Point Pleasant was there to warn us of a coming disaster. But this disaster is far less pedestrian, even if its source is the same. What if there are other, worse manifestations of administrative oversight and hubris? What if, instead of just testing the tensile strength of steel, we instead tested the resistive capabilities against the explosions of atoms ripped apart?
What if one being from some unknown planar or parallel tried to stop the tragedy of Pripyat, or at least mitigate the fallout? Would this totem, this prescient portent be listened to? Or would children and adults alike hurl stones to chase it away so that they could return to whatever comfort they knew?
"Chasing Fireflies"
Will O' the Wisps. Igneous Fatuous. Corpse Lights. Gas the burns with bioluminescent fumes. it all seems easy enough to understand and dismiss until it is three in the morning and you are lost on a murky, damp trail among the mangroves. Then, well, it is easy enough to believe other wise. Maybe, amid the dark willed with hidden razor teeth just below the surface of still wears, you might find hope in brief, flickering lights.
But what if the light itself is a lie? What if it leads you not out from the labyrinth, but further in? What if it bounces and hides in shadows? What if it knows the way out, but instead chooses to lead you deeper? What then?
The point is that these poems deal with more than the simple and superficial. They deal with deeper, more substantial questions than that. All while hiding them in the comfortable trappings of folklore.
At least until that folklore comes pounding on your door.
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