PerVERSEities II, by Kurt Newton
Book Review by Phillip A. Ellis
Have you read this book?
perVERSEities II is, in some ways, as much a companion volume as a sequel to "perVERSEities." It continues the same vein of dark poetry and prose poems, and it reveals much the same excellence of vision and technique.
It reveals much also of Kurt Newton's technique. "Country Cooking" is an excellent example. It starts with a basic, albeit dark, premise: Clem is skinning possums, and accidentally skins Emm-May's two year-old. It develops from this, explaining how Clem's sight is defective, and how Emmy-May "has a knack for producing some of the boniest, hairiest-looking youngins", and how that child had a tail as well. Then he ends, with a morbid humour, that it wasn't until after dinner that the speaker, and the others, heard the news, leading one to easily imagine the cannibalism involved.
Like many of these poems and prose poems, the true darkness remains unstated or implied. "The Hatchery", for example, has its horror within the singular form of a key noun, and it leaves the reader to imagine the worst. Kurt Newton has achieved, as a result, a perfected balance of what is and what isn't said, and this balance forms a dialectic of horror that runs through the volume.
This is poetry and horror in fine form. Indeed, there is little that can be said beyond stating the excellence of various pieces, and going into details about this piece or that. Rather than risk dipping into favourites, since it is hard to choose from them, given their uniformity of excellence, it would be better, simply, to just procure this volume and read it. Such work is a sheer delight, and it can change the demands we place on what speculative verse does and can do.
It reveals much also of Kurt Newton's technique. "Country Cooking" is an excellent example. It starts with a basic, albeit dark, premise: Clem is skinning possums, and accidentally skins Emm-May's two year-old. It develops from this, explaining how Clem's sight is defective, and how Emmy-May "has a knack for producing some of the boniest, hairiest-looking youngins", and how that child had a tail as well. Then he ends, with a morbid humour, that it wasn't until after dinner that the speaker, and the others, heard the news, leading one to easily imagine the cannibalism involved.
Like many of these poems and prose poems, the true darkness remains unstated or implied. "The Hatchery", for example, has its horror within the singular form of a key noun, and it leaves the reader to imagine the worst. Kurt Newton has achieved, as a result, a perfected balance of what is and what isn't said, and this balance forms a dialectic of horror that runs through the volume.
This is poetry and horror in fine form. Indeed, there is little that can be said beyond stating the excellence of various pieces, and going into details about this piece or that. Rather than risk dipping into favourites, since it is hard to choose from them, given their uniformity of excellence, it would be better, simply, to just procure this volume and read it. Such work is a sheer delight, and it can change the demands we place on what speculative verse does and can do.
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