Gabino Iglesias

[REVIEW] A Complex Accident of Life by Jessica McHugh

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(Sparrow Poetry, 2020)

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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Jessica McHugh’s A Complex Accident of Life is complex, but it’s no accident. Inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, McHugh created a series of Gothic blackout poems. However, the book includes a “clean” version of each poem as well as images of the original pages she used, which clearly show the markings, ink, colors, and different approaches. The juxtaposition is visually engaging and reveals the artist at work. The result is a collection of short poems about a plethora of topics that quickly reveals itself as an objet d’art.

The interesting thing about having images of the original pages next to the end result of McHugh’s work is that readers get to see the words as they originally appeared in Shelley’s work and then can read the hidden poetry McHugh revealed by slicing away the “extra” words that were hiding it. This way, a page of Shelley’s work transforms into something new that carries a its own meaning:

“I am a vessel of dauntless courage

And severe evil.?

My joy will endeavor,?

My rage possess.”

According to the author’s note that kicks off the collection, McHugh originally made a few blackout poems to give away or sell. This means that, more than blackout, the pages she worked on were carefully colored and drawn on to reveal the poem within. In A Complex Accident of Life, there is plenty or color, patterns, curlicues, and drawings that go from smooth and organic (like the one for A Blessed House, which resembled a close-up of a cluster of colorful cells) to blocky blackout (although the color used to cover text is never black) with words trapped in tiny rectangles. From time to time, the blackout process is so clearly a work or art that it presents readers with a recognizable image. For example, “A Kind of Pleasure” shows a raging storm at sea, complete with dark clouds, roiling waves, and lightning bolts in the sky.

Perhaps the best thing about blackout poetry is the way it reveals not only a secret that was always on that page but also the personality and taste of the poet plucking out those special words. Reading the poems in A Complex Accident of Life isn’t reading chunks of Shelley’s work; it’s reading McHugh’s voice. “It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishments of my toils,” writes Shelley. Here, dreary, night, and toils could offer an easy start, but McHugh picked November, and the result is a poem that shares the collection’s title and perfectly exemplifies how the poet’s voice is at the center here, even if the source material is Shelley’s work:

“November was half-extinguished,

A dull yellow eye?

Within I endeavoured to form,

Beautiful and horrid,

A complex accident of life.”

Themes abound in this collection, but they all carry the dark, gloomy atmosphere of Gothic literature. Darkness, wounds, monsters, and “quiet misery” can be found in this pages, but the poems are so short that recurring themes never get boring. McHugh received a Bram Stoker Award nomination for this collection, and it’s easy to see why: A Complex Accident of Life is a monster born of the pieces of another monster, all carefully rearranged and brought to life by McHugh. I hope she tackles another classic soon.

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, editor, literary critic, and professor living in Austin, TX. He is the author of ZERO SAINTS and COYOTE SONGS. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

[REVIEW] Baptism by Fire by Amy-Jean Muller

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(First Cute, 2021)

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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“An angry woman remains a political act, and is sometimes a creative one as well. Rage, here, is transcended into art. It becomes constructive—clearing the way for growth. Fury is wielded as a transformative force. It burns away impediments to change. What blooms after?”

That’s the last paragraph of the introduction actress, writer, and pornographer Stoya wrote for Amy-Jean Muller’s Baptism by Fire, a superb poetry collection that serves as the perfect introduction to Muller’s work.

Short collections almost demand a concise synopsis, and Muller’s work screams courage. Her poems use vivid imagery to bring thoughts to life or to reshape the past to give it new meaning in order to be share with readers. Her life is here, and so are religion and motherhood, to name two strong cohesive elements that give the collection a sense of unity. Take, for example, the opening lines of “Choked at birth,” a poem that serves to set the atmosphere for what’s to come: 

“My birth was like a hanging;

breathless and suspended from her tree

I was thrust from her branches

with the chord wrapped twice

around my neck”

Muller constantly uses beautiful language to present ugly things, but her technique doesn’t lessen the impact of what hides behind her words. Take “Roses,” which is devastating and, while short, opens up a chasm in the reader’s heart that soon fills up with pain and anger, none of which are in the poem itself in any obvious ways:

“I met a a father once

and he was different from mine

when he laughed at my jokes

looking at the buds that grew on my chest

pushing swollen behind the flesh

of a pink nipple

And when he handled them like roses

His fingers grasped my blossoms

To hear my wince

having taken a bouquet

of petals

from flowers

that were

yet to grow”

The strength it took to write that comes from a place constantly on display in Baptism by Fire. It’s a strength that shines from Muller’s core, showing how she’s seen life for what it is, survived a lot, and is ready to survive whatever else comes, with or without help. The short lines of “Listen” are a perfect example of that strength, even if they show vulnerability:

“Listen, I don’t pray to God often

but when I do

the ghosts dragged behind me

stir up to face

my reticence,

 knowing nobody heard.”

Baptism by Fire shows a maturity born of experience that is rarely found in such raw form. Muller has deconstructed and understood the male gaze, and takes it to task here in a poem that at first seems to be about hair. She has seen how violence is used to cover fragile masculinity, and she attacks a “Little Man,” a “Little Boy,” or where she talks to someone who “pretended to be a man.” She has also seen through religion, and while it remains here as part of her thought—a scar of indoctrination—she’s done with it: “When I left my faith on the roadside/like those dated books from the attic…” Muller is done with religion, with the glass ceiling, with being asked to “wear some heels to raise your children.” However, there’s not just anger here; these poems are also a celebration. These poems celebrate strength, intelligence, and courage. These poems celebrate women.

In the book’s epilogue, Mueller discusses how the collection was inspired by “symbolism and heteropatriarchal norms found in the stories of Greek and Roman mythology.”  The epilogue quickly morphs into something akin to an academic paper on the role of women in male-centric myths, but the beauty of it is how it surreptitiously reveals an awesome truth: it’s easy for men to be the heroes and women to be the monsters and temptresses, but only when men write the narrative. Baptism by Fire subverts that narrative, and the result is a collection about power and womanhood that dances over the corpses of those old narratives.

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, editor, literary critic, and professor living in Austin, TX. He is the author of ZERO SAINTS and COYOTE SONGS. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

[REVIEW] Now We’re Getting Somewhere by Kim Addonizio

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(W.W. Norton & Company, 2021)

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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Some poetry collections feel impersonal, as if the poet is on some kind of pensive examination of something and the reader is just along for the ride, a witness more than a participant in a conversation. Kim Addonizio’s Now We’re Getting Somewhere is the opposite of that. The writing in this collection is personal, but it also feels like a conversation, like Addonizio is talking to you, bringing you into her world, sharing her thoughts the way a friend would, over coffee or beer or from under their covers.

The beauty of Now We’re Getting Somewhere comes from its ugliness. I know what you’re thinking, but stay with me. Here’s the opening line of “Song for Sad Girls”: “Right now I feel like a self-cleaning microwave about to malfunction.” Bizarre. Brutal. Honest. Strangely relatable. She goes on:

“Sad girls, sad girl, you’re everywhere. Sick on the snake oil

of romance. Blundering in and out of beds

and squabbles with roommates. Scalded by raindrops.

Hating yourselves with such pure hatred.

Loving the music that makes it worse. This is that music.”

That music, the rhythms of doubt, the strident cacophony of self-hatred, permeates the collection. Addonizio creates a world where the real is always present. Drinking, rehab, heartbreak, loneliness; they’re all here, time and again, presented in a unique voice that somehow reminds us how universal that darkness is. “I never learn from my mistakes,” says Addonizio, and neither do we, but if the result of that is personal poetry like this, then I say the best thing we can do is keeping fucking up.

There are no weak poems in Now We’re Getting Somewhere, but the segment titled Confessional Poetry could easily be called its crowning jewel. In the short lines that make up that segment, Addonizio obliterates everything about confessional writing while simultaneously offering some of her own, which goes to show that some things are inescapable: Of confessional writing, she says:

“Writing it is like firing a nail gun into the center of a vanity mirror

or slowly shaking a souvenir snow-globe of asbestos & shame

to quiet an imaginary baby”

The darkness in this collection is oppressive because Addonizio knows how to remind readers about bad feelings. In “Archive of Recent Uncomfortable Emotions, we get a laundry list of them: the “however much I drink I can’t pretend it’s love feeling,” the “everything I write is shit feeling,” and the “my friends are no longer my friends feeling,” hit especially hard for me, but there is something in there for everyone.

Despite that darkness, there is plenty or light. No, wait; maybe I should say the light that can be found here is concentrated in a way that its strength is like that of a laser beam. While there is plenty of humor and brilliant lines, two of them will stick with readers like tiny, positive remoras clinging to their ribs. The first comes at the end of “To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall”: “listen I love you joys is coming.” Short, but sharp and meaningful. The second slice of light closes the collection, and it packs so much that anything I said after it would be useless, so it also closes this review. This line is for you:

“Listen: when a stranger steps into the elevator with a bouquet of white roses not meant for you,

they’re meant for you.”

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, editor, literary critic, and professor living in Austin, TX. He is the author of ZERO SAINTS and COYOTE SONGS. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

[REVIEW] Homie by Danez Smith

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Graywolf Press, 2020

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REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

No one does it quite like Danez Smith. That’s it. That’s the review. Okay, that’s not it. You obviously need a little more. Here we go.

Danez Smith doesn’t just dance to the beat of their own drum; they slaughter magical animals of oppression with their hands, dry and stretch their skins, build the drums, call everyone together for a party, and then play the drums while dancing in a house built of words that can withstand a hurricane, the weight of history and racism, and a collection of memories best forgotten.

Homie, which is the title of this book only for the uninitiated, is a celebratory dance, a slap in the face of complacency, and an invitation to a revolution. It’s also a superb collection of poetry from one of the most interesting and unique voices in contemporary literature. In Homie, Smith opens their heart and their past and invites us all in to take a look. In fact, Smith does more than that: they make us their friend, especially those of us who, as people of color, have faced a different set of struggles.

There isn’t a single throwaway poem in Homie. That said, I won’t discuss all of them. Instead, I’ll give you glimpses of those that have stuck with me for weeks and are still with me now, a month after turning the last page.

The first one is “dogs!,” a strange crowning jewel that contains the taste of many of the cohesive elements that make this collection read like a whole: anger, humor, rhythm, and a message that’s stretched on top of the words like a cat, waiting for you to acknowledge it, to recognize its existence. It’s made up of little poems, all dealing with dogs in one way or another. Here is one I had to share on Twitter:

“scooby doo was trying to tell us

something when every time that

monster mask got snatched off it

was a greedy white dude.”

Here’s one that comes later and slices through our times all the way to the marrow to expose one of those problems that live at the core of this country like an intractable cancer:

“a dead dog is a hero, a dead lion

is a hero, a cloned sheep is a

miracle a dead child is a tragedy

depending on the color, the

nation, the occupation of non-

occupation of the parents.”

Danez’s is the kind of in-your-face poetry that revels in celebrating Otherness, that screams about the realities of the poet’s positionality. They are here to say things that matter, to scream about injustice:

“i didn’t come here to preach peace

for that is hot the hunted’s duty.

i came here to say what i can’t say

without my name being added to a list

what my mother fears i will say

what she wishes to say herself”

And this is Danez’s book, so they say whatever they want to say. In that regard, I guess some readers could find the language shocking. However, the way they use it demands attention. The title inside the book, the real title of the collection, contains a world of meaning. The words here are words that live in the interstitial space between being horrible insults and operating as reclaimed/repurposed terms that carry power with them. Yes, there are words here most people wouldn’t say/shouldn’t say, but “this ain’t about language/but who language holds.” Danez is in your face about these things because ignoring them is not how we make them better, how we bring people together, how we shine a light on racism, homophobia, and injustice.

Homie is timely, powerful, and honest. It’s one of those rare poetry collections that demand to be read because it contains the usual elements (i.e. love, memories, regret), but also brings other elements to the table, elements that are timely and important: bigotry, poverty, culture, and family. This is an elegant collection rocking short shorts; a fun read that’s extremely serious. Go read it. 

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GABINO IGLESIAS is a writer, journalist and book reviewer living in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs. He is the book review editor for PANK Magazine and a columnist at LitReactor. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

[REVIEW] The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter

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Two Dollar Radio, 2019

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REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

Sarah Rose Etter’s The Book of X is a strangely poetic, heartfelt, dark, and wonderfully creepy exploration of womanhood dipped in surrealism and wrapped in a bizarre love story where physicality plays a central role. Packed with writing that inhabits the interstitial place between horror, literary fiction, science fiction, and dark fantasy, The Book of X is a unique narrative that pushes against the boundaries of the genres it draws from while simultaneously carving a new space for itself in contemporary fiction.

Cassie, like her mother before her, was born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. Despite the deformity, she spends a somewhat normal childhood with her parents and older brother on the family meat farm. She usually stays home with mom while her father and brother go to the farm to rip chunks of flesh from the earth to sell at the market. When Cassie starts going to school, her life is sometimes disrupted by people who discover her physical abnormality. Cassie grows up and learns that finding a boyfriend and making friends are no easy tasks when your body is considered grotesque by most people. After surviving school, she leaves home and moves to the city where she finds a desk job. While living in the city, Cassie meets a few men, but it never works out. Meanwhile, the knot in her abdomen starts causing her pain and she begins to visit various doctors in hopes of finding a solution. The struggles with her body seem to be a physical manifestation of the struggles she is forced to face in her new life. Her boss is abusive, the city is depressing, and her family is far from perfect. The meat from the farm brings less money every day and her parents’ aging becomes obvious to her. Finally, her father dies and that sends her back home. Her return to the farm, an experimental surgery, and a new man who enters Cassie’s life under less than ideal circumstances force her to reconsider her life as she learns to enjoy imperfect love and comes to terms with her identity and body. 

Etter created a unique world in The Book of X. Most of the narrative deals with everyday events like going to school, going to work, financial woes, a rough mother, and coping with rejection and depression. On the other hand, the story is infused with surreal elements?a store that sells men, meat farming, strange medical procedures?that somehow make perfect sense within the context of the story. Reality and weirdness inhabit the same spaces effortlessly and without clashing against each other. The result is a novel with a gloomy, depressive core that is also somehow hauntingly beautiful and wildly entertaining in its strangeness.

While this novel is unique and Etter’s voice is entirely her own, there were passages that reminded me of a variety of works, all of which are among my favorites. For example, the combination of sadness and strangeness brought to mind the novels of Alejandro Jodorowsky. Also, the book features short chapters made up entirely of dark imagery, strange visions, and nightmares that haunt Cassie. These passages are strong enough to cause discomfort in the reader. Also, they reminded me of the bizarre sense of discomfort and fascination I always feel while watching Begotten, an American experimental film written, produced, edited, and directed by E. Elias Merhige that has no dialogue and is entirely made up of dark, gruesome, religious, disturbing imagery:  

“He opens the lid wider. More light creeps into the box, and I can see bodies slithering beneath the water, slick, scaled. Suddenly, a small face comes into view beneath the surface: two eyes, strange nose, a mouth.”

While the darkness that permeates The Book of X is one of its most powerful elements, the narrative is also infused with poetry that comes at the reader unexpectedly, kind of like finding a gem while looking for lost papers in a dumpster. That said, the poetry is also imbued with an unrelenting melancholy that crawls into your chest and refuses to let go, settling between your ribs and camping out for a few days: 

“My throat is so full of love and sorrow that no more words come out. I can’t breathe and I know nothing, looking into the heart of the future, the relentless oncoming of death.”

Etter is a talented storyteller and The Book of X is proof of that. This is a book that is many things at once. On the surface, it is a narrative that explores a disfigured woman’s life and how cruelty and adverse reactions to those who are different are at the core of humanity. However, just under the surface, it is a sorrowful story about a lonely woman whose biggest wishes are to achieve some degree of normalcy in a world that has shown her how ugly normal can be and a look at the ways in which our nature as social animals drives us to relentlessly pursue companionship even when doing so repeatedly leads to suffering and rejection.

“In the afternoon, I read a book on the couch. I can barely catch the sentences, I can only imagine Henry’s lips, the history of the entire world in a kiss various genealogies of flowers blooming each time our mouths touched, how first I smelled lilac, then rose, then hyacinth, wet from the garden.”

The Book of X shines because it brilliantly enters into multiple conversations with various genres and shows how writers can use elements from whichever genre they please while respecting the rules of none of them. Etter’s many conversations, and the way she creates something entirely new, effortlessly bridge the gap between bizarro fiction, surrealism, horror, literary fiction, and noir without ever adopting any of their limitations. Furthermore, all of it happens while she creates a delightful dark and brutally honest narrative that shows what it means to be a woman in the world and that explores the ways in which what we are is brutally and/or tenderly shaped by the way others perceive us. In a way, this is a book created to expand the canon of what can be considered feminist literature, but it is also a celebration of storytelling that proves making up your own rules is sometimes the best way to create something unique and memorable.   

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GABINO IGLESIAS is a writer, journalist and book reviewer living in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs. He is the book review editor for PANK Magazine and a columnist at LitReactor. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

[REVIEW] Arsenal/Sin Documentos by Francesco Levato

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(CLASH Books, 2019)

REVIEW GABINO IGLESIAS

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NOTE: The following is a tweaked version of my introduction to Levato’s book.

Writing poetry entails pulling feelings, dreams, and memories from nothingness and bringing them to the page with words. That’s why it’s so easy. That’s why it’s almost impossible. On the other hand, blackout poetry is the art of pushing unnecessary/extra/dishonest words into oblivion so that the true message, the meaning behind the jumble of words, can be revealed. Since the words are there, given, one could argue that it’s an easier task. However, that is not the case. Every discourse is constructed with an intention, and this type of poetry demands a ruthless, fearless deconstruction of that discourse in order to reveal the truth. If poetry can speak truth to power, then what I’m choosing to call here revelation poetry speaks truth to power using power’s original discourse.

Francesco Levato’s Arsenal/Sin Documentos is a courageous book. More importantly, it is a necessary book. We are witnessing abuse and bigotry daily. We are living a ridiculously anti-immigrant rhetoric created to cause fear of the Other. This book slashes into the center of that issue and exposes its inherently racist core. Remember watching science fiction movies as a kid and being scared of aliens? Well, alien is, once again, a word used to instill fear, and to deliver a clear message:

“The removal of these aliens, must be prioritized.”

But these are not aliens Levato is talking about. These aren’t grey monsters with huge black eyes or evil green humanoid beings with disintegrating ray guns; he is discussing immigrants. People. Brothers and sisters in the struggle that is staying alive and caring for those we love. He is talking about children. Yes, the same children that got tear-gassed at la frontera.

Now imagine your life is so shitty you decided to leave everything you know behind to move to a different country. You have no money and fear abandoning your home, your language, your friends, your job, everything. Then you get here and the folks holding the American Dream receive you with “Choke holds/neck restraints/baton to the head/electronic pulses to cause/Incapacitation/or pain.” Welcome to the United States, cabrones.

Now stop imagining things. What you are about to read is not about imaginary things, it’s about everyday things that happen at the border. It’s about rules and regulations that were created to control and dehumanize. It’s about exposing the reality of a system that seems to be designed for a war and not for receiving individuals seeking asylum.

Like I said, stop imagining things. There are real words will real world implications ahead. Words like lethal and enforce. Words like authority and body and discretion. Words like taser and trauma and control. These words matter because they point to a flawed system. These words matter because Levato pulled them from a plethora of official documents he felt have “the capacity to affect an embodied subject both discursively and physically.” They matter because they tell stories about the way other humans are seen, treated, processed. They matter because they are the law of the land, sanctioned by those in power and applauded by many.

There is a point in the career of every writer where he or she will have to decided if politics are going to be part of their oeuvre. Even deciding that they won’t is a political move. I respect that. However, fully engaging is something I respect much more, and that exactly what Levato has done here. There is no pandering. There is no sugarcoating. And there is Spanish. This level of engagement is the literary equivalent of standing in the middle of the road a few seconds after the cops drove by, one hand squeezing your crotch and the other held up high, middle finger flying. That deserves respect.

Perhaps the beauty of Arsenal/Sin Documentos is that it exposes truth while also leaving the door open for the reader to discover more. For example, it includes the instructions for immigrants who want to become citizens. Among those requirements is knowledge of English. Yeah, and then you remember there is no federal law establishing English as the official language of the United States…

Frontera narratives matter now more than ever, and you’re this book is a crucial addition to the list of books tackling the issue.

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, book critic, and professor living in Austin, TX. He is the author of ZERO SAINTS and COYOTE SONGS. His work has been translated into four languages, optioned for film, and nominated to the Wonderland Book Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Locus Award. His literary criticism appears regularly in venues like NPR, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Criminal Element, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His nonfiction has been published in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other print and online venues. He was a juror for the 2018 Shirley Jackson Awards and the 2019 Splatterpunk Awards. He is the book reviews editor for PANK Magazine and a literary columnist for LitReactor. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

[REVIEW] Losing Miami by Gabriel Ojeda-Sague

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(The Accomplices, 2019)

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué’s Losing Miami is an outstanding exploration of exile, Otherness, and the possibility of returning to a place you’ve never been to. Unapologetically bilingual and packed with explosions of language in which coherence is ignored and the reader is invited to make connections between words, this poetry collection is at once brave, nostalgic, and passionate.

Ojeda-Sagué is fully aware of his status as a displaced person. His Otherness, like that of many others, make him a permanent nomad, someone who belongs only to movement and transitional/interstitial spaces. The same applies to his family, which came from Cuba. His work reflects that. Much like Gloria Anzaldua’s mestiza, the poet and his family live surrounded by the idea of a return to a place that never was or that could never be again:

I am asked if I would go to Cuba now that policies

have changed. When I ask my abuela the same

question, exchanging “irías” for “volverías,” she says

que “no tengo nada que hacer en Cuba.” Somehow,

I feel the same, even if I could never say “volvería”

because I have never been to Cuba. Returning would

not be the form, in my case. But to grow up in Miami,

as the child of exiles, is to always be “returning” to

Cuba. Everything has a fragrant—not aftertaste,

but third taste—of Cuba. Angel Dominguez writes

“What is the function of writing? To return (home)”

but his gambit is that the flight (home) is the writing,

the verb “to return” is the writing, not the home itself

or returning to it. What is the function of writing:

“to return.” The answer is no, I would not go to Cuba,

because the Cuba I come from only can be returned

to in the murmurs of the exile.

Ojeda-Sagué is a very talented poet, but the most beautiful element of Losing Miami is the code switching. Anyone who follows my work knows I love bilingual writing, and Losing Miami is full of it. The poet cambia de idioma de momento, sin perdir permiso a nadie y sin preocuparse por hacer que los lectores que no entienden el idioma lo puedan entender. This gives the collection an undeniable sense of authenticity and a cultural depth that few of its contemporaries share. Whole poems are written in Spanish without translation. They aren’t italicized or explained. They are what they are in a language that isn’t foreign; it is the poet’s language. Here’s “Esponja”:

el internet me hace sentir horrible, como si

todo pasara a la misma vez, y como si hubiera 30

horas en el día / casco del demonio / ciruela /

avenidas y malas noticias / dominó / dibujo el

mundo sobre un papel / duermo adentro del congelador /

encuentro parte de un radio en el patio / lo siembro /

allí crece un manicomio / azul y marrón /

en seis semanas / azul y marrón /

ciruela / una uva entre los labios de Patroclo /

en seis semanas todas estas ideas

serán ahogadas / serán fluidas /

al dibujo le añado agua de una esponja

While the poems in Spanish can be hard to decoded for those who don’t know the language, they are relatively simple and will not offer much of a challenge for those who opt to translate them. However, there are other poems in which Spanish and English share space that are not that easy to decipher. Ojeda-Sagué writes rhythmic clusters of words that act like a celebration of language, a bridge between cultures, and an invitation to fill in the blanks. These don’t appear early on. Instead, they show up once the reader has an idea of how the poet’s brain works. They are fun to read. They are intriguing. They tell tiny single-word stories and sometimes add up to bigger, multilayered narratives. Readers should slow down when they encounter them. These poems demand to be read twice, to be explored, to morph into new realities in the brains of those who read them. Here’s my favorite one:

sincrética allowance pájaro steak dar

criminal coraje water tendida field debajo

salted mar virus sigue giant carabela city

palma awful infección girls abierta bluer

grama palms sudan rafter mariquita heat

boca agape el great mosquito summons

coraje and viento acid pueblo gridlines

pobreza dreaming Haití they mandan

back queman back pobreza back abierta

back rezo that no take mi sweet vida back

If Losing Miami is any indication of what The Accomplices are going to be publishing, then do yourself a favor and put them on your radar immediately. The strength of this book sent me looking for more of Ojeda-Sagué’s work. It will do the same for you.

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, book critic, and professor living in Austin, TX. He is the author of ZERO SAINTS and COYOTE SONGS. His work has been translated into four languages, optioned for film, and nominated to the Wonderland Book Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Locus Award. His literary criticism appears regularly in venues like NPR, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Criminal Element, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His nonfiction has been published in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other print and online venues. He was a juror for the 2018 Shirley Jackson Awards and the 2019 Splatterpunk Awards. He is the book reviews editor for PANK Magazine and a literary columnist for LitReactor and CLASH Media. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

[REVIEW] Cove by Cynan Jones

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(Catapult, 2018)

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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Cynan Jones is one of those authors who constantly reinvent themselves. His body of work proves he is fearless when it comes to exploring new territory and always willing to explore the way language can be used to maximize the impact of a narrative. In Cove, which was published in a beautiful hardcover edition by Catapult, Jones offers what is perhaps his most minimalist narrative while trying out new rhythms and showing what extreme economy of language can accomplish.

A man is out at sea. He is in a kayak and gets caught in a sudden storm. Then he is struck by lightning. When he wakes up, adrift on his kayak and with a shattered hand, he finds his memory gone. He can’t remember who he is, where he came from or how and why he ended up floating in a kayak in the middle of the ocean. Despite his lack of memory, he knows he has to move, to push forward toward the shore, to survive. In the absence of recollections, his instincts take over and survival becomes his main goal. In his struggle, the ghost of a sensation, not quite a memory, comes to him: a woman and a child are waiting for him, and he has to make it back to them. What follows is a short, visceral read about a wounded, memoryless man fighting for something he barely remembers.

Cove is a self-contained master class on economy of language. It is also a outstanding example of what happens when writers allow brevity and poetry to mix outside of poetry:

Still, his memory is out of reach, things approaching, dipping, disappearing. A butterfly, nearly knowledge. He thinks of the state of his skin, does not know if he had started out clean shaven, knows, though, that his stubble grows at uneven rates.

Jones is a superb writer, and he flexes new muscles in this book. Besides his usual storytelling, there are things happening with the writing here that go beyond good writing. The most memorable of them is the rhythm of the prose. Insistent is not a word usually used to describe writing, but it applies here. The words keep coming, hitting the reader the same way the water laps against the kayak. Sentence construction follows an arrhythmic sort of melody that constantly changes, shifts in lengths, and then returns to previous cadences:

He looks at the stars, sees those on the horizon. That some of them might be the lights of ships, of land, he can’t allow himself to think. Cannot allow himself to image the warmth, the food, the safety they would mean. It is better they are stars. That they are out there somewhere in the same infinity as him. That they are not real beacons.

The plot of Cove is deceptively simple: a man trying to make it back to something he barely remembers after having a horrible accident. That said, there is an honesty to the writing, to the simple actions of the man, that makes this a captivating read. Furthermore, once the man is invaded by the idea of a memory that may or may not be real, his demeanor changes, his priorities morph and give him renewed strength, and readers go from being witnesses to actively rooting for him:

With the knowledge of her had come the need to ease her worry. It was impossible for him to believe he would die, but it was possible for him to believe he could leave her alone. Her and the child.

This is more a novella than a novel, but regardless of what you call it, this book cements Jones as a master of the short book and a leading voice in terms of maximum impact packed into extreme economy of language. If you’re a fan of great writing, don’t skip this one.

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, book critic, and professor living in Austin, TX. He is the author of ZERO SAINTS and COYOTE SONGS. His work has been translated into four languages, optioned for film, and nominated to the Wonderland Book Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Locus Award. His literary criticism appears regularly in venues like NPR, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Criminal Element, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His nonfiction has been published in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other print and online venues. He was a juror for the 2018 Shirley Jackson Awards and the 2019 Splatterpunk Awards. He is the book reviews editor for PANK Magazine and a literary columnist for LitReactor and CLASH Media. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

[REVIEW] Too High and Too Blue in New Mexico by Becca Yenser

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(dancing girl press & studio, 2018)

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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Nothing compares to hearing about a book and quickly finding a mind-blowing excerpt. That’s exactly what happened to me with Becca Yenser’s Too High and Too Blue in New Mexico. I read a single poem and knew I had to devour the rest and write about them so others could discover the power in Yenser’s words. Here’s the gem that opens the book, the tiny marvel that got me hooked, “How To Forgive In the Desert”:

 

First, attach yourself to the sky.

Go to the furthest edge of city: violet,

Starstruck, closer to god. Not everyone

Has the heart for it. Some hearts are less red.

 

Find yourself a cloud kingdom. Don’t

Come down easily, stay up in that thin air.

Don’t think about how you can’t breathe.

People have not breathed here for 11,000 years.

Second, try to remember why you’re here.

 

Slick rock playground. These are hippos

On their sides. There is never any water. Arroyo.

Say arroyo over and over until your throat is a canyon.

Third, pray to the creatures, especially the Whiptail

 

Lizards whose backs are lined like cucumbers.

Birds will come and go. Fine-dusted worries will land on your toes;

Coarser planets, in your hair. Running will result in headache.

Please, do not run.

 

Remember: You will never be able to see the plateau and the canyon.

At the same time. When you are walking one way, you

Will only remember what is behind you. When you look

Behind, you will only guess what lies ahead.

 

You do not know who you are anymore.

Now drive home. Shudder in the kitchen.

Watch him eat cold cereal as you try to explain

Your tiny heart; the handfuls of stones in your pockets.

That should be enough to get you to read it. However, this is a review, and that means I have to keep going. Too High and Too Blue in New Mexico is extremely short, so don’t expect a long review, but the magic in its pages is worth writing about. Coming in at just 15 pages, this is more a snack than a meal, but its length doesn’t detract from its strength. This collection is full of feelings, packed with illuminating words that show us the poet’s inner dialogue, desires, and struggles, and pulsating truths and questions that range from the personal to the universal. It also chronicles a journey and celebrates different places. Lastly, it speaks of a communion between the poet and the world around her, between the writer and nature, that is stunning:

Kingcup, Desert Cholla, Prickly Pear,

Pincushion or Spiny Star Cactus:

I wanted to pull up all the desert plants

From their roots, hairy and mad;

To keep a book of their deaths.

Yenser understands that there are no dividing lines between beauty and melancholy, love and pain, perpetual motion and the desire to return to the past. This wonderful collection reflects that knowledge. The poems in this book celebrate the poet’s life, but they do so in a way that communicates to the rest of us that there is plenty to celebrate out there; it’s just a matter of going our and finding it. I found some of that beauty in these pages.

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist and book reviewer living in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs. He is the book review editor for Pank Magazine, and a columnist at LitReactor. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

[REVIEW] The Way We Came In by Kelby Losack

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(Broken River Books, 2018)

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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There are two kinds of crime fiction. One kind is written by authors who think people do bad things because they are bad. The second kind, the kind that matters, is written by writers who understand that there is a plethora of reasons why someone would commit a crime. In the latter group, the authors producing the best, most authentic narratives are those who have been in direct contact with people like that and have experienced those situations. These authors possess a deep, nuanced understanding of the psychogeography of crime. Their work is generally devoid of judgement and representations that border on caricatures. Author Kelby Losack belongs to this group, and his work is a raw, visceral representation of desperation, hustling, and lives where there is no space to even fathom upward social mobility.

In The Way We Came In, Losack’s latest novel, a couple of brothers get together after one of them is released from prison. They have to make money to pay their rent, but regular work won’t give them enough, and they’re running out of time. What they need to do is clear, and it involves drugs and guns. It’s a path followed by many before them, and it’s supposed to happen smoothly, but things go south. They come up with a plan to stay afloat, but that also goes bad. Without the money they needed or the drugs to sell and after a failed attempt at fixing everything at once, the brothers end up in the hands of a man who plans to take their life for what they tried to do to him.

The Way We Came In is a tense, too-real story about coming up with a hustle when every other course of action is impossible. It is a narrative about need and desperation, but also about trying to do the right thing first and brotherly love. Losack explores the special relationship between brothers who love each other and trust each other in a way you can’t trust most people. These men share a gloomy past and the loss of their mother, and that pain brings them together above and beyond their blood. As with his previous novel, Heathenish, there is an unexpected emotional dimension to The Way We Came In that pushes it into an interstitial space between hardcore crime fiction and literary fiction.

There are many elements that work together to make this a required read for crime fiction fans (or fans of the unique type of narratives Losack writes, which I’ve always called hoodrat noir), and tension is at the top of that list. This novel moves forward at breakneck speed, and the action and tension ramp up at the same pace. Short chapters, explosive action sequences, and superb economy of language add to that:

“I jumped at the sound of knuckles rattling the screen door. You grabbed the burner off the table and for a few seconds, we sat motionless, staring at the front door. The rapper said, “Me desperté sintiéndome como si estuviera en la luna.” The second knock came heavier, more tenacious. I jumped again. You whispered, “Hide it,” waving a hand over all the yayo. While you crept to the window to cop a glance behind the bed sheet curtain, I held the unzipped lip of a backpack to the table’s edge and swept up all the contraband with my arm, then I shouldered the bag and spun around, ready to follow if you bolted, but you had tucked the gun in the back of your jeans and were reaching for the door knob, scratching your temple and shaking your head the way you do when you’re trying to suppress a laugh.”

While there is nothing quite like what Losack is doing in contemporary literature, the mix of real life struggles and keen observations are somewhat reminiscent of underground literary legend Peter Plate. Just like Plate did with San Francisco, Losack is a chronicler of the everyday struggles of folks on the verge between the right and the wrong side of the tracks. In The Way We Came In there are guns and drugs and people doing bad things, but they are not cutouts of criminals; they are people forced into illegal hustles. This lack of judgmental writing makes Losack’s work shine. He knows poverty, humanity, and doing whatever it takes while ignoring potential consequences are the holy trinity of crime in real life, and he brings that to the page beautifully. Furthermore, he does so while showing that the streets have many levels, and not everyone is on the same one despite sharing the same spaces:

“A vagrant who’d been begging at the intersection shuffled in on concrete-spattered tennis shoes. The toes of his shoes were split open so it looked like they were yawning when he walked. The old lady humming gospels smiled at him as he passed. The vagrant spent a good long minute in

the restroom and came out with beads of water dripping down his dreadlocked beard. He sat on a stool beneath a small analog television that hung from the ceiling. He watched a sitcom, laughing every time the studio audience laughed, and even when they didn’t. His laugh was a raspy cackle that was often followed by a red-faced coughing spell.”

Three quarters of the way into this books I was thinking: “Watch out, crime writers! Heathenish announced the arrival of an exciting new voice, but The Way We Came In proves Losack isn’t here to play.” Then I kept reading and reached the last two pages of the book. Losack had been holding out, keeping a piece of surreal magic in his pocket, like a desperate man trying to tell a story while holding an ounce in his fist. When I read the ending, my mind changed and my warning morphed into a decree: “Go home folks, the king of hoodrat noir is here and the game is over.”

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist and book reviewer living in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs. He is the book review editor for Pank Magazine, and a columnist at LitReactor. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.