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Book Review: A Complex Accident of Life by Jessica McHugh

cover art for A Complex Accident of Life by Jessica McHugh

A Complex Accident of Life by Jessica McHugh

Apokrupha, 2020

ISBN-13: 979-8647146519

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition ( Amazon.com )

 

The ghost of Mary Shelley haunts the pages of A Complex Accident of Life by Jessica McHugh. With words insightfully culled from Frankenstein, the blackout poetry in this brilliant jewel of a book captures the tragic intensity, dark fervor, and dramatic suffering of Shelley’s life as well as something totally new, inspired, and relatable.

 

Through startling images of struggle and determination, this collection also reveals the essence of Shelley’s creative imagination as a writer and her mind and heart as a woman. McHugh tells us, “She felt hope like a moon: / A bright heart nothing could extinguish. / She embraced its bounty / And settled passion upon purpose.” Shelley’s words, like gold deposited decades ago in the novel’s text, are mined and skillfully transformed into a contemporary memoir by the talented McHugh.

 

On each page of the book, the reader will find an entire printed poem and then, below it, a copy of the blacked out (in color) page from Frankenstein from which the poem was taken. The pages from Frankenstein are in numerical order, which is astonishing when you realize that the poems do not reflect a narrative that parallels that of the novel, and yet one poem smoothly flows into the next encouraging a slow, thoughtful reading.

 

McHugh has carefully shaped each eloquent verse to stand alone, a sort of reflective snapshot in time. There is something so tender and wounded about these poems; they sometimes seem like private thoughts that should not have been divulged: honest, raw, and deeply felt. McHugh draws us into that place where those thoughts and feelings are simultaneously hers and Shelley’s, and together, they become an expression of universal truths.

 

Jessica McHugh has truly lifted blackout poetry to an entirely new level of remarkable craftsmanship. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

 

Editor’s note: A Complex Accident of Life is a nominee on the final ballot for this year’s Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in Poetry.

Posted on March 19, 2021 by , Reply

New Review: Black Moon: Graphic Speculative Flash Fiction by Eugen Bacon, illustrated by Elena Betti

cover art for Black Moon by Eugen Bacon and Elena Betti

Black Moon: Graphic Speculative Flash Fiction by Eugen Bacon, illustrated by Elena Betti

IFWG Publishing, 2020

ISBN: 978-1925956658

Available: Paperback  ( Amazon.com )

 

With evocative illustrations and fabulous cover art by Elena Betti, the soft-hued blue pages of Black Moon by Eugen Bacon invite us to experience a pastiche of speculative poetry, prose, narratives and images. The titles of this collection of short pieces, such as “Cinders in Her Hair,” “Unlearning the Sea,” and “The Book of Unfinished Parables,” spark the imagination and tease the intellect. The widely diverse themes run from societal issues to personal experience and even fantasy. The tone varies from serious, to playful, to philosophical, to dark. Eugen clearly has eclectic interests and tastes and reveals them in an uninhibited, relatively unstructured fashion.

 

The poetic hybrids Eugen experiments with are definitely worth extra attention, but they seem to be in the middle of development. It is difficult to discern whether Bacon intentionally leaves the reader to her own devices in creating meaning in Black Moon or whether that effect is inadvertently caused by the writer’s artistic choices. Some of the pieces are quick snapshots of moments or ideas, but they do not include that particular magic of word choice or arrangement which little gems require. Other pieces are a bit longer and provide more context but seem unsatisfyingly without purpose or incomplete in some vague way.

 

Reading this book is like taking a stroll through a dream in which you recognize familiar objects but realize they are somehow out of context. It is also, at times, like reading a book in another language and trying to figure out a word you don’t know by comparing it to words that seem similar but end up having quite a different meaning. This abstract quality has its charm: eyes that are “serenading” and that are “shifting” “like an opal,” but sometimes it is just confusing: a window that “floundered” back to “her” house where she “locked herself to” tears.

 

Overall, Black Moon is a visual fusion that projects the author’s vision in such a way that the writer’s words become more concrete for the reader and the illustrations become more meaningful for the viewer. This is a natural synthesis that has the potential to evolve into a form that lovers of both poetry and art will enjoy.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

 

Posted on March 11, 2021 by , Reply

Women in Horror Month: Book Review: A Collection of Dreamscapes by Christina Sng

cover art for A Collection of Dreamscapes by Christina Sng

( Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com )

A Collection of Dreamscapes by Christina Sng

Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-947879-17-1

Available: Paperback, Kindle

 

Christina Sng’s A Collection of Dreamscapes is a deceptive title for dark and subversive poems about myths and fairytales. Sng takes Emily Dickinson’s advice to “Tell all the truth but tell it slant” and not only slants it, but twists it into a more horrible truth than she found in the original stories. The poems are divided into five sections, with titles for the first three that are, again, deceptive. We begin with “The Love Song of Allegra”, about the exploits of a viciously murderous warrior, and recognize childhood favorites in “Fairy Tales”, involving female victims who choose revenge. Next, “All the Monsters in the World” are overcome by strong women who refuse to give up. The horror increases and becomes more explicitly described in the section called “The Capacity of Violence” and concludes with glimpses of hope in “Myths and Dreamscapes.”

 

The opening poems in this collection create a mythological backdrop for the horror heroines of the fairytales. However, these tales combined with predictable new narratives make the second section feel longer than it needs to be. The third and fourth sections include the most important poems of the book in terms of revealing the world’s horrors. Although the reality of pervasive evil, the idea that no place is completely safe, and the thought that we can never really know a person’s deepest darkness until it is too late are truths spun into many a story and poem, Sng brings them to greater heights through artistry. The speakers in these poems deny the existence of monsters while actually being or becoming monsters. It seems the dividing line is in the doing: sewing body parts together; performing a lobotomy; strangling the man who left you, an infant, to die in the forest. After all of the violence, the final poems suggest that there could be a fresh start, a new way, an end to the horror, but that reaching that point will also involve violence and possible death. The question remains whether the future is just as much a cruel myth or terrifying fairytale as what we have already experienced. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Posted on February 8, 2021 by , Reply
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