Growling Softly
Blood Pudding Press, 2007
Reviewed by Cynthia Reeser

Released by Blood Pudding Press in 2007, the poetry collection Growling Softly is aptly named; there is indeed something suppressed and waiting to pounce in many of the works within. The collection more or less embraces a theme—some works are dark, some grisly, but the most startling provide a window into a moment that, most commonly, is love or fear.

Poems by Michalle Gould and Kristy Bowen stand in complement to one another, and it is fear that dominates the mood. In Gould’s “Noctiphobia (Fear of Night),” the imagery supports selenophobia (a fear of the moon), siderophobia (fear of the stars), phobophobia (fear of fear), sciophobia (fear of shadows) and apeirophobia (fear of infinity). Where “it began with a fear of the moon”, fear becomes a thing to be pursued itself (1). One phobia leads to the possibility of another: “Phobophobia suggests the possibility of somniphobia,/ threatening insomnia and sciophobia—the fear of shadows” (18-19). Bowen’s “symmetrophobia” lends images where this fear might play, as it is a place “[w]here the terror is exquisite. A slow, beautiful throttle.” (6); and “ornithophobia (fear of birds)” possesses an internal ring of Plathian syntax, especially with “In the end, it’s the gothic that gets us, sets me folding and unfolding like a note pinned to a dead girl’s sweater” (1-2).

“Karen’s First Murder, Age 12,” by Victor D. Infante, meshes with the ominous overtones contained in much of the work in this volume. Infante employs a narrative style that opens the poem up to the reader, with the theme of death less singly followed than the pursuit of fear evidenced in Bowen and Gould’s pieces. The narrative style allows Infante’s poem to engage with such subjects as consumption, capitalism and even the devaluation of life, and not just death itself:

The cow’s death was a small thing–quick slice of a knife across its throat,

blood seeping into the ground, its eyes staring vacantly at nothing in particular,

its body twitching until it finally stopped, transformed into a product,

something to be consumed. (17-20)

Death is common––an attainable end, while the ever-hungry consumer-product relationship is as unsatisfiable an ongoing cycle as supply and demand; and the final line reads, “That was something I could understand” (21).

Mary Alexandra Agner’s “Troll” is one of the collection’s highlights, utilizing language to clever benefit. An abusive baker is addressed by the girl “who won’t transform/ into a perfect baker’s daughter” (27-28). Despite the fact that it is largely a revenge poem, the language carries the whole work through and concludes with the satisfying “Oh, I will grind your bones down/ and suck the sweetness from your flesh,/ until no memory of fame for cake or pie remains” (39-41).

In Christine Hamm’s “My Father’s Ghost Visits Me on Christmas Day,” sweetness is again sinister, sometimes threatening: “…you will get nothing from/ someone who has their hands full of sweetness and gold” (21-22). The imagery building up to this conclusion is lilting and conversational, as with Infante’s narrative style. Observations like “I haven’t seen him for two years and he’s bluer around/ his hairline, mouth twisted and pale” insert powerful imagery seamlessly into the narrative flow (9-10). The poetic language in this case is at its strongest when it captures a moment with an image.

Jill Alexander Essbaum’s “Rag(e) Doll” uses language darkly and to chilling effect, as in “I’ve buttons for my eyes,/ and they seethe in their tin-/ Snipped shankings” (6-8). Some elements of antique origin are introduced, grounding the reader to a sense of time and place that feels like dark Victoriana but manages to remain liminal, perhaps addressing the speaker’s identification of herself as angry at being nothing more than someone’s “infant plaything”, where the sense is conveyed that she herself is ungrounded and coming apart because of the situation (54). Her anger comes through in lines like “You seem to yank at my seams/ Whenever you please it” and feigns subdued accusation: “Don’t toy with me, Poppetsmith./ Keep your notions in your sewing box./ I’m no one’s little girl” (40-41, 1-3). Hers is the voice of the rightly angry––in this case, girl—who suffocates beneath the weight of a situation she is powerless to affect except by turning it inward.

But girls aren’t the only ones who express a sense of violation; after all it can work both ways. “my gory guts” by Luc Simonic is a rare poem about a male who feels dehumanized by a female’s sexual desire for him:

[…] you look at me as if

i should spill my gory

guts upon your table &

ring ring ring the triangle (5-8)

Several works in the collection use imagery as the catalyst, integrate lyrical language and present moments of love or sweetness—the good sort of sweetness—without declining into sentimentalism or overwrought language. “Fleur and the Phantom Limb” by Melissa Culbertson, as with Essbaum’s piece, identifies the body with a sense of other; in “Rag(e) Doll,” her body becomes like a doll’s, “unposeable” (13); in Culbertson’s work, the body takes on something additional rather than transforming: “I am more than what a knifenip left me with-/ mended boots, slipstump, limb-bound and sacking,/ a leg toothed in steel. An appliance” (11-13). There is, with the lack of the limb, something else opening up, further possibilities: “I’ll show you the use for loose plastics,/ silk and lace and metalpin skin jobs./ There is a beauty in bolts and bones”, and in the reconstruction and reinvention of the body (20-22). There is also provocation, brought forth in the line, “I’ll make you forget symmetry” (19).

Another work that captures a moment is “He Said, You Look Smashing” by Elisa Gabbert. In this case, the moment is one of excitement and the images are both playful and celebratory, as with “Suddenly, everything was shiny––street signs,/ stoplights, the magazine he twisted in his hands, a glossy/ mobius––emitting sparks and stars” (4-6). Others poems convey titillation with playful use of language, the end result of which resurrects the jocular poetic spirit of e.e. cummings. Derek Motion introduces playful movement with “i can drive &”, a poem that addresses a lover and conveys sweet infatuation that says ‘I can be whatever you want’ without ever saying it directly: “i can be as overexposed as you/ i can be a collage/ i can be music” (1-2). Others, like Amber Nelson’s “April 28” and “April 29” evoke cummings both in form and subject. These additions to the collection serve to balance out the darker elements found throughout much of the work, and in the end, function as reprieves.

The best works in Growling Softly use captivating language to bolster imagery, providing a more convincing dialectic than poetry that relies solely on language to convey its ideas. The dualities of love and fear found throughout manage not to coexist in disharmony; after all, the two often come as a pair.

Growling Softly and other hand-bound publications are available from Blood Pudding Press. Find them on the web at www.bloodpuddingpress.etsy.com.

Cynthia Reeser is the Editor-in-Chief and founder of Prick of the Spindle and runs an imaginary commune on an obscure island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, populated largely by green spotted elves and and the odd troll dressed like George Bush. In her spare time, she is a staff writer for a military newspaper, where she writes a weekly book review column. She also paints when the trolls become too annoying.

© 2007 prickofthespindle.com