Beast, to Be Your Friend by Jennifer Moss

Reviewed by Eric Weinstein

ISBN 978-1-934832-19-6
New Michigan Press, 2009

Jennifer Moss calls forth a full menagerie in her new chapbook, Beast, to Be Your Friend: birds, goats, cows, octopi, and others populate a landscape in which the line between human and animal is artfully blurred. Wonderfully concise, her poems anthropomorphize their subjects in unexpected ways; the poem “Cow” comprises only the lines: “In her expression / is some skepticism.” “The Pet,” the sequence “Beasts Framed the Field,” and “In Mammal Hall” all propose that their four-legged foci are more human than the reader might at first believe. The latter of these notes of a zebra:

He’s standing on his wooden mount
staring through the glass
as if some sharp urge had pierced his heart
and frozen him in space.
The border of the brain turns cold.

The deeper emotions and mental machinery of these mysterious beasts are never revealed, however, and this liminal aspect of Moss’ work ensures that none are fully human, as we might discern from the title of her poem, “Making the Centaur.” Occasionally she reminds the reader less overtly, as in “Three Octopi”:

—How was your life?
—Green and wide.
—Will the sky die? Will it break like glass?
—We are just three octopi.

As if to say that three simple octopi are incapable of the daydreaming and grand philosophizing that are the hallmark of the human race. (Or, perhaps less comfortably, none of us, human or otherwise, is capable of them.) This subtlety in tone is reflected in the rhyme and cadence of her poetry, and when combined with her excellent ear for and economy of language, this collection emerges as a kind of agriculturally-minded, beautiful Imagist experience. Although it rarely feels too light, Beast, to Be Your Friend, at a mere eighteen poems, leaves us desiring more from this gifted new poet.

Visit New Michigan Press on the web at www.newmichiganpress.com/nmp.

Prick of the Spindle Poetry Editor Eric Weinstein recently graduated magna cum laude from Duke University with an AB in English and Philosophy. His writing has previously appeared in a variety of online and print publications, including The Archive,Wheelhouse Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, and Rainy Day. His poetry hasbeen nominated for inclusion in Pushcart Prize XXXIII: Best of the SmallPresses (2009). A native of New Hampshire, he currently lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

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