Review: Darling Beastlettes by Gina Abelkop

title:  Darling Beastlettes [purchase here]

author:  Gina Abelkop

genre:  poetry

published: 2011

source:  I purchased a copy at her reading at the Mustard Beak.

"Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words."

~Paul Engle, New York Times ( 17 Feb. 1957)

Have you ever read something and come across a phrase or a line that made you stop and think "DAMN I *wish* I had written that!"?  That happened more than a few times as I read Darling Beastlettes over the weekend.  Gina's stunning collection made the 2 1/2 hour Greyhound bus ride to Hartford, CT surprisingly enjoyable (despite the dude sitting next to me who took  "Greyhound bus" to mean "moving booze-free karaoke bar" and rapped aloud to himself for all 2 1/2 hours...with choreography...).

Poet Gina Abelkop, founder and editor of feminist press Birds of Lace, is supremely gifted at creating haunting, otherworldly images and turning out gorgeous verse.  At the heart of her poems are women, real and imagined, recognizable and authentic.  Adroitly observant, the themes Gina tackles aren't new (gender roles, sexuality, femininity, love, lust, etc) but they feel that way due to the welcome freshness and honesty of her perspective.  

My favorite stanza from "Heather in Curls":

"Ask for a hideaway bedroom, one with a secret fireplace, a stack 

of fabric that leads in well-tread steps to another country, one with mountains. 

You can cry over them as much as you'd like, they'll be there forever."  (p. 39)

A snippet from "Greta" (my FAVORITE piece in the collection):

"...At night

opened her breast like a gushing fruit

and fed reveries of love.

Nightingale wanted some

she could crawl inside.

Others looked upon her snidely,

ripped at her raw chest, 

wouldn't fit,

closed their own in return.

All this gore and nothing." (p. 61)

GAH!  Just...wow.  Brutally observant, her delivery is at times as fanciful as it is raw...which isn't easy to pull off without coming across a tad manic (which she does not).  As I said in a previous post, I don't know much about what experts say makes a poem "good," BUT I know what speaks to me, and Gina does.

Rubric rating:  8. I am absolutely keeping an eye out for her future work :)

You can read poems by Gina Abelkop at:  La Fovea, Two Serious Ladies, and Everyday Genius, among other places (check out her blog for a far more comprehensive list).  And if you happen to be in LA, check her out at The Empty Globe at Pieter Projects w/ Kate Durbin @ 8pm, or at the Saturday Night Special Reading Series @ Nick's Lounge, both on May 25th.

Review: Drifting House by Krys Lee

title: Drifting House [purchase here]

author: Krys Lee

genre: short story

pages: 224

source: I received an advanced reader's copy via Netgalley 

in exchange for an honest review.

"After a few minutes he reappeared from the kitchen with a low table heavy with rice, soybean paste soup, beef rubs marinated in honey and soy sauce, and pickled vegetables.  There was her favorite banchan: beef-stuffed chili peppers and candied lotus flower roots.  Men rarely entered the kitchen; the store-bought banchan arranged on small plates was his usual plea for forgiveness.

'I made dinner for you,' he said.

As she sat on the floor and ate his lie, he watched, delighted.  He kissed her on the throat, the earlobe, the mouth, until she said, 'That's enough.'

He kneeled on the bamboo mat beside her.  'I'm a foolish, weak man.'

'I know.'

'I want to be the universe for you.'

She tapped the thin fuzz on his scalp with the fat end of the chopstick.  'That's impossible.'"  (page 154-155, A Small Sorrow).

Lee's debut collection of short stories is a bit uneven, but remarkable nonetheless. Set in both Korea and America, her stories are at times tragic, at times haunting, and always richly tonal.  Lee also seems to be one of the rare contemporary writers who trusts in the intelligence of her reader, in their ability to interpret and infer, which I absolutely appreciate.  

A couple highlights...

A Small Sorrow:  My personal favorite, and in my opinion, the strongest story in the collection, A Small Sorrow takes a peak inside the marriage of Eunkang and  the monogamously-challenged Seongwon.  LOVED the way Lee slowly and deliberately laid out each moment with such lyricism.  If this is any indication of what Lee is capable of, I'm really excited to read more from her!

The Goose Father:  a father, after sending his wife and children to America, takes on a tenant who believes that his pet goose is his mother reincarnated.  I felt that the story itself was stronger than the way it was told, but the story itself was almost otherworldly and far made up for the telling.

Rubric rating: 7.5.  Definitely looking forward to read her novel, How I Became a North Korean, which is coming out next year :)

Review: The Odditorium by Melissa Pritchard

title:  The Odditorium  [purchase here]

author: Melissa Pritchard

genre: short stories

pages: 252

source:  I received an Advanced Reader's Copy from Bellevue Literary Press 

in exchange for an honest review.

Melissa Pritchard has some legit authorial street cred.  Thus far, her short fiction has won:

• the Flannery O'Connor Award,
•  the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, 
• the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize,
• a PEN/Nelson Algren Honorary Mention
• TWO O. Henry Prizes,
• TWO Pushcart Prizes,
• the Ortese Prize in North American Literature from the University of Florence,
• the Barnes & Noble Discover Award,
• fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Hawthorne Foundation of Scotland, the Bogliasco Foundation of Italy, and the Howard Foundation at Brown University

AND she's been chosen for NPR's Summer Reading List AND her work has been anthologized many times over.

To say Pritchard was immensely talented would be a careless understatement.

Now, I usually grab short story collections as my subway reading.  I like the feeling of accomplishment I get from being able to finish a short story or two while crushed against complete strangers during my commute. 

 (sidebar the first:  did anyone else die laughing watching Liz Lemon's morning commute on 30 Rock a few weeks ago?  For those of you who don't live in New York, that was not at all exaggeration for comedy's sake.  That was EXACTLY what Newt Gingrich's "elite" New Yorkers face between the hours of 8-10am and 4:30-7:30pm EVERY SINGLE DAY.  Which is probably why we New Yorkers have the reputation of being a bit cranky.  The only thing missing from 30 Rock's vignette was the smell. When you're smashed against multiple people in several compromising positions, there's inevitably someone in close proximity who does not believe in deodorant.  Or likes to pile on the perfume/cologne.  Or who hasn't bathed in several moons.  Or probably should see a physician re: what is making their feet smell like moldy cheese.  Or all of the above.  sidebar the second:  perhaps I hold a grudge for an excessively long time, but I'm still in awe of how out of touch Newt Gingrich's comment about "elite" New Yorkers ride the subway.  In my job, when I'm out working with schools, I ride the subway all day.  I would like to personally invite Newt to commute with me for a day, on my dime, and then ask him how "elite" he feels....might also impact his stance on public school education...two birds, one stone. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...)

However, this is not the ideal collection for short bursts of reading, because Pritchard is one of those amazingly rare contemporary authors whose prose is so lyrical and so thought-provoking that you're going to want a nice window of quiet time to savor it, like a well poured glass of Malbec on a chilly November evening.  (Also, any author who can use the descriptor "labial pink" in a story without it feeling as tawdry as a bodice rippers' various "throbbing members" is truly a master of their craft). Each story in her collection defies the notion of genre, and as uniquely structured as each piece is, as a whole they form a coherent and well curated collection.

A couple highlights:

Captain Brown and the Royal Victoria Medical Hospital:  My absolute favorite in the collection, this story focuses on Captain Brown, poetry enthusiast who's somewhat incongruous to what one typically pictures as a military commander, as he takes command of the Royal Victoria Medical Hospital post D-Day.  The descriptions of the hospital itself are as haunting as many of the images and characters Pritchard conjures.  A highlight of the collection.

Ecorché: Flayed Man: This story felt a bit like the love child of Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence and anything by the Marquise de Sade.  It follows the crucial players who, while performing their collective tasks of "Collector," "Director" and "Anatomist," work to create and maintain 1798's version of the Bodies exhibit.  I admire Pritchard's graphic and lyrical yet concise language as she describes the various exhibits and the men who maintain them.

Rubric rating: 8.5.  One of the most unique collections I've read in ages.  I can't add her to my "personal pantheon of prolific prose-makers" YET, but I have a feeling once I read more of her work, that's where she'll end up.

PS Check out this piece of marketing genius from Bellevue Literary Press:

Review: Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey

title: Observatory Mansions [purchase here]

author: Edward Carey

pages: 356

originally published: 2000

source:  Barnes and Noble, Union Square

Full disclosure:  If you haven't gathered as of yet, I'm a bit of a book snob (in the words of my mother).  I'm expect a lot from what I read and sometimes I have a hard time keeping an open mind when reading new authors and new genres based on what I think I might or might not like.  That being said, I'm also a book jacket designer's dream, because I have been known to buy books based solely on an awesome cover, which is exactly what I did here.  

Good call on my (completely shallow and aesthetically motivated) part! Gothic horror is not usually my genre de preference, but I was pleasantly surprised.  The characters that Carey created have stuck with me for months.  

The story takes place in Observatory Mansions, an apartment building converted from a mansion owned by the Orme family where Francis, his mother, and his father still reside.  Utilizing a series of memories, letters, first person narration and lists, Carey introduces us to the Mansions' residents and to the buildings apartments, which almost act as characters themselves. 

Haunting story filled with love, loss, eccentricity, stillness, loneliness, connection and existence that examines how what remember (and what we forget) can shape who we are.  Eerie, disquieting, and at times, heartbreaking.

Rubric rating:  7.  I'm definitely going to check out Alva & Irva: The Twins Who Saved a City.