Gosh, I love feisty poetry, don’t you? I’m not a particular aficionado
of supervillains in popular culture but that didn’t stop me from enjoying "Doom, Love Songs for Supervillains"(Insomniac Press, 2012). But if you do love DC & Marvel Comics, you'll probably go ape-shit over this book.
First of all, I enjoyed the honed down poppety pop sound play. You
can read these babies aloud to your pals & they will laugh. I have to admit
that it’s refreshing to read poems that aren’t autobiographical. it’s not that I’m
against autobiography. I write a fair number of them myself, but sometimes you
just want well-written poems that have fun & icksnay on the woe is me-isms,
if you get my drift. I’m writing like this under the influence of NZW’s poetry.
These poems are smart too: they use some highfallutin’
scientific lingo.
I read a heck of a lot of unrequited love poems & hear the
same at open mics. They all have the same references to the moon, the wistful
tone…Doom, Love Songs for Supervillains is parody of such without being cruel. It has off-the-wall similes & metaphors: "envious as a viaduct" (Dr. Octopus), "voicebox a soup can" (Joker); the opposite of praise: "face only a geneticist could love" (Doombot)...
How many of you have read “Thumbscrews,” (Snare Books, 2007)
NZW’s first book, winner of the 2007 Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry? It
explores the concept of constraint in terms of poetic form and BDSM. It’s a
helluva kinky little read. This follow-up collection has its share of kink too;
nothing like a little degradation & humiliation & brattiness to spice
up a read:
General Zod
kneel before
obeisance buys lives
so I knowtow
press my forehead to your boot
tip
slobber and grovel –
or do you
prefer me unbroken?
I’ll grudgingly genuflect
sweetly sneer
as you wrench back my hair
twist me to bruised knees
kneel
The whole
idea of constraint from the last book is applicable here too, in my opinion.
There’s a discipline to these poems in their minimalism, choice of diction
& form. These poems do not wander; they get straight to the point.
They are
smart too. Take a look at this one from the first section “Rogues Gallery:
Domination”:
Jekyll and
Hyde
you speak in
third person
and
enraptured by your dichotomy
I crave
triad
all grey
area
the swooping
arch
of the coin
caught
sideless
the
in-betweenity
before
chance
I long to be
your
indeterminate
let me be
the pause
the second
part of this collection, "Strong Hold," which describes various fictional
settings from the Marvel/DC Comics universe, seems to pour on the Gothic: hell
never lets in a draft/never lets a hearth grow cold/never quails before
collapsing towers” (Latveria).
I haven’t
read a lot of comic books, but I’ve seen a few of the Marvel Comics films. One of the
things that I noticed about these poems is that they seem to be an alternative
rendering or viewpoint of what happens to the female characters, such as
Danger Room
and it is
because she
her body an
abattoir
smeared with
rank slaughter
and data
became senses
as
flamethrowers shrieked
and
radiation splattered
and her spine
was destruction
each rib a
welded hell
heartbeat a
hologram
and with
each invasion and tamper
each rape of
her circuits
the heroes
befouled her
and their
filth swelled into form
the shape of
metallic consciousness
her
processor’s core gone synaptic and cold
a bullwhip
breaking the sound barrier
a live wire
touching your tongue
and she
said: “Shall we begin?”
“Rogues
Gallery: Girl Fight” features supervillainesses, such as Catwoman, Poison Ivy
& Lady Deathstrike. I have to say that these poems are poems I wish I’d
written. I wish I could write like this: powerful, brooking no argument,
insightful, playful, argumentative with the status quo.
The next
section, "Bondage," is about the prisons where these villains are housed. There’s
a short section of two poems called “Bang” and a final section, “Rogues Gallery
3-Destruction.”
I’m
impressed with the power of these poems & the creativity, playfulness &
intelligence that went into them. I should also mention the superb
illustrations by the very talented Evan Munday.
On a
personal note, I remember when Natalie came to town to read, along with Ryan
Fitzpatrick & William Neil Scott at the A B Series on November 1, 2007. It was the inaugural event of the darling A B Series. I
wrote about it here. afterward we
chatted & drank at that back of the Mayflower pub that no longer exists.
Dear friend Warren Dean Fulton was there too. It was a heck of a good time. I dearly wish Natalie, Neil & Ryan would return. We'll have to find a new pub though.