By Myra Gabor
This is a book of 40 poems, all with horrific or gory themes.
Ah, yes—poetry. It was one of the subjects I was supposed to learn to appreciate in high school. And I did, as long as the teacher pointed the class in the right direction. I was taught that poetry wasn’t necessarily about rhyming lines or iambic pentameter. It was about the economy of words. You should read Katherine Mansfield’s “The Wind.” It’s a short story written in paragraphs, but you’ll know it’s poetry when you read it.
Mr. Capitan’s poems are modernist, with no rhyme and a different rhythm in each stanza. He shortens the lines to make them closer to the way we imagine poetry, but he uses many seemingly superfluous words.
He talks about ugly things, like sacrificing babies on rock altars, or someone cutting themselves so that the blood flies up into the sky and falls as rain, waking the dead.
Mr. Capitan’s world is filled with disgusting things and nothing beautiful or bright can redeem it. You don’t have to use your imagination to fill in the blanks. The author lays everything out so that you can see his world clearly.
This isn’t Ogden Nash, folks. But it’s a good read when the mood strikes you. And, like a short story, you can pick it up at any time and turn to any page without having to remember who the characters are or what the plot is supposed to be.
However, I can only give it a 3 because it is so brutal.
Book here.
score:3/5
