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New Books in Poetry: The Devil’s Dreamland by Sara Tantlinger

Sara Tantlinger-The Devil's Dreamland

A new episode of the New Books in Poetry podcast is up, in which I get to speak with Sara Tantlinger about her poetry collection, The Devil’s Dreamland.

In The Devil’s Dreamland: Poetry Inspired by H.H. Holmes (StrangeHouse Books, November 2018), Sara Tantlinger intertwines fact and speculation to examine inner workings of H.H. Holmes, a man who committed ghastly crimes in the late 19th century and who is often credited with being America’s first serial killer. Narratively arranged, these poems offer up an evocative and chilling imagining of life and times of Holmes along with his wives, victims, and accomplices. A profound and fascinating collection for anyone interested in the riveting realm of true crime.

“The building shivers
beneath each curve of my footstep,
my home, my castle
fit for Bluebeard himself,
entwining murder and luxury
like salt and sugar
placed gently on the tongue
where each tiny grain dissolves
in a way blood never will.”

— from “Shades of Wild Plum”

You can listen to the interview here or on the podcast app of your choice.

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Culture Consumption: March 2019

Hi, lovelies. Here’s my month in books, movies, games, and podcasts.

Books

It’s been another amazing reading month. I adored Gwendolyn Kiste’s The Rust Maidens, a stunning work of body horror in which young women begin to bodily reflect the decaying undertones of the city in which they live. Their bodies reflect the rust, marred concrete, and broken glass that surrounds them. Check out my full review for a more thorough description and the reasons I love this book.

Speaking of horror, The Devil’s Dreamland: Poetry Inspired by H.H. Holmes by Sara Tantlinger is a profound and chilling collection, which blend fact and supposition to relate the life and times of the man thought to be America’s first serial killer. The poems are visceral with a fascinating narrative arc. I was excited to have been able to recently interview Sara for the New Books in Poetry podcast, which should be available soon.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi is a stunning book of YA fantasy. Magic in Orïsha is gone, the maji long dead. Only their children remain, marked as outcasts by their silver hair. After a chance encounter with a rogue princess, Zélie learns that magic might have a chance to come back — if Zélie, her brother, and the princess can survive long enough to conduct an ancient ritual. The world building and setting is rich and fascinating, the characters are multi-layered, complex, and strong, and the story presents a compelling epic quest. I can’t wait to read the second book.

Old Man’s War by John Sclazi is the story of John Perry, who joins the Colonial Defense Force at the age of 75. He signs up, like many people his age, for a chance at a second youth and at seeing the universe beyond Earth. I’m not generally a fan of military SF, but I love the way this story is told. I dig how we as readers get to experience Perry’s growing astonishment as the weirdness he encounters out in the universe just keeps getting weirder — and more deadly. It’s a rollicking good story.

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New Books in Poetry: all this can be yours by Isobel O’Hare

all this can be yours-Isobel OHare

My latest interview with Isobel O’Hare is up at the New Books in Poetry podcast and ready for listing!

Isobel O’Hare’s all this can be yours (University of Hell Press, 2019) presents a series of erasures crafted from celebrity sexual assault apologies. These poems offer fierce explorations of the truth hidden behind apologies intended to explain away or dilute culpability, rather than accept responsibility. The result is a powerful collection that opens up a wider conversation surrounding sexual assault and the need for change on a systemic level.

I was also excited to learn that the interview has been featured on LitHub!

Here’s a bit from O’Hare during the interview:

Erasure poetry for me started out as a magical, playful, light-hearted exercise to jog the brain, to sort of get me thinking differently. And it also started out as a conversation with someone else’s work, and sort of a reverent one—approaching someone’s work with great respect and the desire to bring something out of it that might be hidden beneath the surface. There are lots of methods of doing that—I’ve used whiteout in past erasures, and I’ve done blackout with Sharpie. I’ve experimented with cutting words out.

The idea is you’re removing something—or you’re not removing something. Jen Bervin had a really interesting term for it . . . something like restitution. It’s a really interesting word for what you’re doing with erasure, which is not necessarily removing something, but bringing something forward. So it’s not always you violently attacking someone else’s work, which it can feel like sometimes, but you’re allowing things to bubble up to the surface that may not have been apparent before.

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Poet Spotlight: Sara Ryan on taxidermy and beauty in the uncanny

Sara Ryan poet

Sara Ryan is the author of the chapbooks Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned (Porkbelly Press) and Excellent Evidence of Human Activity (The Cupboard Pamphlet). She was the winner of the 2018 Grist Pro Forma Contest, and her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Pleiades, DIAGRAM, Booth, Prairie Schooner, Hunger Mountain and others. She is currently pursuing her PhD at Texas Tech University.

never leave the foot of an animal unskinned-sara ryanI loved reading your new chapbook Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned. Can you tell us a bit about this collection and how it came into being?

This collection manifested in a material culture theory class during my MFA. In this class, we contemplated objects in literature and how those objects were handled in these literary worlds. We were challenged to choose our own objects and engage with them critically and creatively, and after a lot of research into my various interests, I found an old book in our library that lead me on a strange journey into the world of taxidermy. This book, Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting: A Complete Handbook for the Amateur Taxidermist, Collector, Osteologist, Museum-Builder, Sportsman, and Traveller by William Temple Hornaday (published in 1891) became the nexus of this collection.

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New Books in Poetry: Basic Programming by Megan Burns

Basic Programming by Megan Burns

Athena Dixon shared a new interview with Megan Burns for the New Books in Poetry podcast! Athena writes:

Basic Programming (Lavender Ink, 2018), the latest collection by Megan Burns, is an exercise in balance. Between grief and healing. Between humanness and technology. Between examination and acceptance. Building from her brother’s death and journeying through her grieving process, Burns guides readers into her heart and back out the other side, all of us changed and inquisitive after learning just what it means to be who we are both as people and programs.

You can listen to the interview on the New Books Network or on your favorite podcast app.