Su Zi's Review of Juliet Cook's REVOLTING!

 

For a generation now, or better, writers have been able to connect with each other through electronic methods of writing. While some writers may use these means to disseminate their work, others tell us about new works in the hopes that a few of us will buy a book, a physical book. It is in this way of announcement that we who read are presented with opportunities for our personal libraries; and herein it must be stated that civilized people have personal libraries, and these collections ought to contain a few rare items, such as chapbooks. For the book lover, holding a rare and potentially fragile print entity speaks to intimate and hidden histories: it’s a physical experience.

Often, the chapbook might come from someone we actually do not know. Oh, obviously we saw the post about this new work, and maybe other posts from the press or the author, but we don’t really know their favorite flavor of ice cream. We are gambling that perhaps there will be something here to ponder, something that speaks to our interior selves. 

When the book comes, it is folded into a few sheets of colored, better weight printer bond that feels as if it’s part of the cover. The cover itself is a collage printed on cardstock stapled to cream colored hot press paper that enhances the readability of the standard font used. The work has neither contents or pagination, and it’s not necessary with a chapbook that’s a dozen folded sheets. The book is a pure example of the chapbook format, and this one has a subtle and elegant presence. Ironic to this perception is the book’s title Revolting (Cul-de-sac of Blood, 2024), the work being a recent offering from Juliet Cook.

Those unfamiliar with Cook are provided with both an acknowledgments page and an author bio that testify to some years dedication to poetry. The website for the press includes a purchase option through PayPal; potential readers are thus assured that this is a more professional indie press. There’s also a list of other books from the press, and the website has a submission link for the press’s periodical zine.

Thus, we can confidently approach the poems. Cook’s style oscillates between the conversational and the surreal without ever being derailed from the poem’s thesis. There’s a fun energy here, a sense of play, even when the topics themselves might not be lighthearted. The centerfold poems in this chapbook discuss being a poet on the left side, “Fifty Mice” and a physical injury on the right, “Thorns Stuck Inside My Left Foot”. Both poems use a conversational language, with “Fifty Mice” employing repetition and interior experience, while “Thorns [...] Foot” employs a narrative sequence. However, the acuity of imagery and the use of self-deprecation elevate this poem. The first stanza of “Thorns[...]Foot” shows an elegant fluidity

I fell down on a Sunday.

Better to fall than to bow.

I fell down in a restaurant,

Landed on my knees with my feet bent backwards,

almost automatically bruised, as if

to teach me a lesson for walking for myself

My left foot looked like a strange stigmata

with the blood stuck inside, growing dark.

The reader is in the scene, a relatively ordinary slip fall agony, but is immediately struck with the facetious tone reinforced by “better to fall than to bow” and “to teach me a lesson for walking”, so that the empathetic ouch leads not to tragedy but transforms into the familiarity of self-derision. The sonically sensitive will also note the opening slant assonance in “down/Sunday/bow/down” shifts with the plot to long e with “knees/feet/teach” and the various a vowels that culminates in “strange stigmata [...] growing dark” , so that the poem itself howls e—a as it opens and we all fall.

As rare as it is to physically resonant with a poem, to feel it in our physical selves, it is a moment in reading that reinforces why we read—the connection with other selves. And while chapbooks aren’t often found in bookstores—when they are, they require patient inspection—becoming mostly centered in the ouroboros realm of book festivals, they are the bread and butter of many an independent press. In our times now of needing to prioritize individual makers over global producers, it does a greater good to buy a chapbook for our libraries. Sometimes, the author even signs it.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

                     

Check out her author page on Amazon.