Fabulous Essential by Niina Pollari

A blurb review by Cynthia Reeser

Birds of Lace, 2009

While I have a deep appreciation for indie and DIY publishing, more often than not it is the aesthetics that set one press apart from another. Niina Pollari, author of Fabulous Essential, is a Brooklyn-based writer and translator who is a competent-enough poet, but whose work has the misfortune to be printed by Birds of Lace on garish orange paper housed within a bold red cover whose gold lettering push the book more into ghetto fabulous territory than anything fabulously essential. Aside from the distracting aesthetic, Pollari’s poetry evinces an adeptness in its use of language, a decent sense of movement, and what is sometimes an avant-garde flavor, as with “At the Opaque Performance” and others. The three-part “Sexy Apoplexy” is postmodernist in its provision of choice and its lack of absolutes:

Arguably her greatest characteristic is the crustacean way she dreams. In segments. Nothing moved interdependently. Everything is/was its own, or became seen that way after/when the eyes adjusted/were adjusting to the light.

I am interested in Pollari as a poet, but would like to see her push her work beyond the merely gimmicky and avant-garde in the future.

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Cynthia Reeser, Editor-in-Chief and founder of Prick of the Spindle, is a freelance writer whose book reviews can be found on NewPages, Tarpaulin Sky, and in other places throughout the web. Her poetry is present or forthcoming in 42opus, elimae, Dogzplot, The Dirty Napkin, Artifice Magazine and others; and her artwork can be seen at www.cynthiareeser.com and in various journals. She holds degrees in Music (Piano Performance) and in English Literature. Her poetry chapbook, Light and Trials of Light, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

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