Review: Bone-Bodiced

Entering a secret world.



Aaahhh, yes, the world of chapbooks. Usually 8 inches by 5 & ½ inches in size (Stateside), often printed on handmade or decorative paper, consisting of perhaps twenty to twenty-five pages, sometimes illustrated, sometimes not. And containing on each page...yes…yes…yes…

Poetry!

A world unfortunately little known except to endangered poets toiling away at their exquisite craft and to that even more obscure clan, the lovers and readers of poetic images. Obscure? There's no doubt about it. After all, when was the last time you saw someone reading a chapbook on the subway? Or rocking out to one on YouTube?

There are moments when I wish I possessed a magic bludgeon by which I could decree that Oprah feature a poet a week on her daytime gabfests while relegating Dr. Phil and his ilk to lecturing in a basement room at the local homeless shelter. But then again: Fuck 'em. It's their loss.

One fine recently issued chapbook is Bone-Bodiced by Rachel Kendall and Juliet Cook, published in the United Kingdom by ISMs Press and in the U.S.A. by Blood Pudding Press. It comes with an illustrated color cover, deckle-edged pages, some stick-on decals and a fancy, feather-like black ribbon binding. Inside are six poems by Juliet Cook and seven prose poems by Rachel Kendall.

The prose poem as a poetic form was both invented and perfected by the likes of Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. These are tough masters to follow but Kendall is up to the task. Each of her brief prose compositions creates an exquisite Gothic fantasy world bubbling up with fantastic, weird, outré and often funny images. Each reader will choose his or her own favorites. Mine were the opening prose poem 'Pins and Needles' and the longest (at 2 pages) and funniest piece, called 'Bird Brain'.

With a few swirling images Kendall's 'Pins and Needles' conjures up a 1940s sweatshop in New York City where rows of seamstresses toil endlessly. But their mundane creations take on a secret life, momentarily morphing into exotic butterflies fluttering in the room. But only for an instant before they are scooped up in nets by "the whisperer," "the reaper," the man who makes his fortune by the labor of these sad, weary women. In the next instant, Kendall sweeps us into another room where a collector of insects, imagined to be "his pretty girls," coaxes butterflies into glass jars to be poisoned and then pins up the exquisite corpses to be sold. "I'm an artist, don'tcha know," says the lepidoctor, as he spreads the wings of the dead insects "like opening up a young girl, so delicate, so careful not to damage." These are truly two wondrous worlds of Gothic horror; Kendall's images will haunt you.

In 'Bird Brain' we enter the odd, even whacky domain of a solitary caged “chalk-white naked” bird creature who, in proper anal retentive fashion:

Nests in one corner, defecates in the other. Eats in a third. Keeps the
latrine and the eating area separate at all times. Plays in the fourth.
She keeps cabin fever at bay with a discipline of solitary capers.
Optimum drive. Shooting craps.

She survives the "fat hands" of her keepers but shudders at the risk that one of their children will grown into a torturer "sticking pins in her and snapping her bones." We follow her brief flirtation with love when a male bird, who is no "coy old bird,” appears in her cage. But he soon departs as suddenly and mysteriously as he arrived. So once more our caged bird

sits in her corner, a small white featherless thing, shooting craps,
writing rhymes and drawing the blueprints for a fine new pair of
wings.

'Bird Brain' is a funny, odd, carnival sideshow about…well, perhaps about the lonely but self-reliant life of a poetess.

Juliet Cook's poems present equally dark and Gothic sensibilities though in more pared down language, juxtaposing odd bedfellows to scary effect. Thus in 'Pig Box' we are treated to:

a gaping piglet maw
glutted with wilted posy
of plucked-from-stem Antirrhinum
malformed confetti

Unfortunately for this reader, despite this awesome opening image of "a gaping piglet maw," the later sequences of images in this poem failed to build to a meaningful crescendo.

Much more accessible is 'Doll Head #1' which enumerates the grotesque mistreatment of a doll's head ("ripping out hair," "pound nails into her bald rubber dome"), whose none-living lips nevertheless

…would smile the entire time
even if she was shaken

until her eyes fall out.

Ah, the cruel pleasures of children.

My own favorite of Cook's arabesques is 'Poison Jar,' in which a mother of pearl button from her grandmother's button jar comes to life and attacks the narrator. Soon enough:

grandmother's doilies began to ruffle,

flap like the harvested wings
of some antique thing with a hideous beak
and a hankering for the flesh
of sinful little girl fingers.

Again we are in the frightening never-never land of a child's half-real, half-illusory world.

The pleasures of this slim volume are worth the price and your time.

Buy this book>>[PRINT RUN SOLD OUT]

Bone-Bodiced by Rachel Kendall & Juliet Cook
Black Pudding Press

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ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Jonathan Woods is a writer living in Dallas Texas. When not writing he works part time at a small art gallery: Dahlia Woods Gallery.