Planchette by Juliet Cook
Blood Pudding Press, 2008
Reviewed by Jen Garfield

e.e. cummings was concerned with the physical presentation of a poem on the page. Juliet Cook takes that notion, and the entire concept of book arts, about seventeen steps further with her 2006 chapbook Planchette from Blood Pudding Press. From the get-go, she’s got enticement down to a science: Who wouldn’t want to read a pile of poems printed on rough blue card paper with long-haired, paranormal girls and rhinestones on the cover, bound lovingly with ribbon?

The poems themselves are quirky, kinky missteps into a world of eerie tea parties, fingernails, parlor games and blue pills. Think Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides meets The Velvet Underground. For further proof, just read the epigraph’s promise of

haunted girls,

dusty divans,

odd divinations,

spider eggs,

creepy dolls,

& rather dreadful clairvoyance . . .

While some of the poems may require a dictionary (“Planchette,” and “Hippomancy,” though some of you word freaks out there might already know what these mean), most are less about making traditional sense than creating an ominous, alluring atmosphere. This is poetry as experience; poetry as taste, touch and sound. The most delightful lines are from “Hippomancy,” in which Cook writes:

. . . Swooning,

languishing, licking pastels, my toenails look like

violet pastilles like jimmied non pareils like shallacked petals like

little bruises preserved between waxy daybook pages.

Another poem that showcases Cook’s unique sense of the macabre is “The Spindled Girls,” which I can best translate as a disturbing delusion of vapid feminine perfection. Cook writes: “They are wan and wilty and blue-tinged . . . The spindled girls have eyes that glaze as they sharpen their scissor blades.”

Overall, the poems offer an unsettling, dream-like feeling of falling into the rabbit hole filled with some kind of pink, translucent liquid. But let me tell you, it’s quite a fall.

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

Jen Garfield is the poetry editor for Prick of the Spindle. Her poetry has appeared in  numerous journals and recently, she was the recipient of a 2007 Illinois Arts Council Literary Award. Her chapbook, Excuses for Happiness, is forthcoming from Pudding House Press.  This week, she likes Greek mythology, advice columns, and shih tzus. 

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