Four Elements (Bad Moon), by Marge Simon, Rain Graves, Charlee Jacob and Linda Addison

Poetry. By three of my favorite modern poets and one new one to get super excited over. There was no way I wasn’t going to buy this collection. Despite my usual attempts at aloofness, expect fanboy squees to follow in abundance.

The premise here is fairly simple, each poet attributed an element with poems that tie into that element in some way. This allows for a sense of coherence without limiting the results to the point of monotony.

“You call me mother”

Marge Simon is a perfect choice for Earth. Her poetry’s always well grounded and solid. Deceptively simple to grasp, even as fine grains slide through your grey matter. “The Time Drifter” and “The Astronaut’s Return” show this beautifully. Both seem to be straightforward narrations, one sided conversations, that bookend each other with a simple inversion (“It is death, not life, that has no limits” and “It is life, not death that has no limits”) that ties these two disparate stories together, feeding new meanings and impact into them. Then there is “That Thing You Do: 3005 A.D.”, which seems so archaic in concept, with the washing and preparation of the bride for congress juxtaposed with the futuristic date. It’s soft, sensual, natural, yet is obsessed with deception. And that isn’t going into her marvelous use of rhythm and stanza.

“Drink, and be reborn”

Then comes Rain Graves, whose work I have never read before this but who is described as a meeting point between Lovecraft and Bukowski in the introductory material. Any illusion of the peace and tranquility often associated with water is ruptured and drowned from the start with “The Alligator God and the Sea” awash in violence and rage and utter nihilistic disappointment. I am sure Hemmingway would be happy with the allusion. Her words slip and slither, edging on reason and sitting comfortably on the tongue; full of rich imagery and meaning that slides through grasping fingers. Where Marge’s poetry is easily accessible, Rain takes a bit more work, but it’s well worth the effort. Take this, from “HP Lovecraft, Drinking a Little”: “bleeding to be whole, and imaginary, and culinary and… simply loveable, like wine. We often feel, say the Elder Gods, we are just the cheese they brought, and not at all the good kind” and try not to weep a bit at the loss of importance. She ends it all on a series of poems based around the myths of Hades and those thick, black rivers that flow therein. I may well have a new obsession, here.

“Dancing to music of both screams and birth”

Charlee Jacob. I shouldn’t have to say more than that, should I? But you know I will. Fire blisters, burns and scars the flesh, but sears clean wounds that throb with infection. I can’t think of a better metaphor for her work. There are no words here that do not carry the weight of agony on their shoulders, no stanzas that do not bury you beneath it. There is less sense here, and more rage in these intricate paintings woven of words and emotion; dreams that screech and whine on the stark white of the page. Yet, there is a catharsis and a sense of hope to it all, echoed in the self-determinism of Lucifer (via “Reaching Back to Eden: The Snake”) that “when we die we shall have to rely on our own light, flickering, wan, at tunnel’s end”. I’ve said it before and will continue screaming it from rooftops until you bastards listen: This woman is my shit!

“Sings softly over stony curves”

Rounding us out, we have Linda Addison, a woman who was first brought to my attention by a scraggly post-mortal feline and the grandiose come-on of Dr. Booty. Her poetry can seem random, immensely beautiful but evasive. Words flow and eddy, tear and caress, then flit away into nothing and it all can too easily be dismissed as nonsense. As she states in “Fearless”, “There are no answers in this empty when, just death, ghosts, bleeding songs, one broken moon shape high above, no one to breathe me.” Please note that “seem” from earlier, though. There is meaning here, even if it will not present itself to you. There is sense as well as sensation, but it refuses to sit still. Like Marge’s twinning of the Drifter and the Astronaut, Linda loops the aptly named “Disambiguation” into “Homecoming” into a dance of dissolution and reformation that makes it clear that Addison does not act without purpose. I’ll be puzzling over these poems for quite some time and I love it.

I don’t normally like to give directives, but you should just go ahead and buy this damn book.

Cover art:
I’ve already established my adoration of Daniele Serra’s work. Here, it is the simplicity that makes it work. Those deep, earthy tones with the flow of air and the spatter along with the hair rising in curles of flame. The closed eyes betray a sense of sadness while the single bared breast hints at vulnerability. Its a thing of beauty and grace that fits the collection very well.

reviewed by Anton Cancre

22 More Quick Shivers (Cosmonomic), ed by James and Janice Leach

Horror in 100 words.  Can a story saying so little come to so much?

This second collection of 100 word stories, based on the posted nightmares from Dailynightmare.com, hopes to do just that.  Their goal:  enhance in story form any of the posted nightmares on the website with a focus on any one of the five narrative “pentacles” – Mood, character, plot, setting, or theme.

Why Short Story Anthologies Deserve Your Attention and Why a Miraculous Book of 100-Word Stories Deserves it Doubly So in less than 100 words:  Because this one pretty much kicks ass, and because we just don’t seem to have much of an attention span anymore. And because there are some real gems in this collection – although, I’ll say up front, it’s more prose-poetry than short stories, and some of the stories fall well short of the mark of the five narrative “pentacles”.  But that’s not why we read.  We read because the stories are good.

The Good, the Bad, The Utterly Banal as I understand it.

My taste in books is vastly different from that of my good friend, the stand-up dude behind this website:  he veers toward the Lee/Pelan/Goon  “eating the corn” gross-out where I prefer not reading about that, ever.  Ever.  So when said stand-up dude hands me a book to read I have a tendency to sigh, read the first few pages and go back to whatever else I was reading.  This one, however, grabbed me immediately.  The compilers of said publication ask, “Had any good nightmares?”  Well, if you haven’t, someone else has done it for you, and some far more talented people have explored those nightmares for stories that are truly chilling.

The Good as per any decent review, and here is why you should pony up the pittance being asked to procure this volume.  The poetic beauty of creating a truly complete story in so few words.  Prose poetry in all its glory, children.  Take Agreement for instance; a beautiful piece of poetry disguised as fine print—the sort of thing you click through and never read when you agree to the latest Google app bent on stealing your identity and taking over the known world and such.  Or Birth Ritual, a poetic esoteric that drips with fear, as the perfect new birth so pink and fresh and defenseless is born, a boon for the maggot offspring of these insectile celebrants.  Or my personal favorite, RIP ellipses, a story in utter pause, with not an ellipsis to be found.  And about the typography—Glenn Mielke, self-styled “Canadian Art-Snob” does one hell of a job picking font and design that compliments the content of each story, though in some cases the artistic bent becomes somewhat heavy-handed, rendering the text difficult to read.

The cover art feeds the overall sense of darkness and nightmare.  Photographed by James Frederick Leach, it is an improvement on the cover for the original collection (13 Quick Shivers) which seemed somewhat amateurish in its composition. It’s the same distinctive Jeremy Haney gargoyle sculpture but the placement of the title is better effected here with the image, creating an overall more complete and artistic work.

The Bad in my opinion hardly outweighs the good, but it is there, and must be noted for fairness.  As I already noted, some of the more artistic fonts make for difficult reading.  For instance, Tornado Girl is beautiful to behold, with all the swirls and eddies of the serifs indicating the wind-work of little tornadoes, but it makes the story more of a challenge to read.  Additionally, there are a few stories that just won’t make any sense to you unless you peruse the website.   As a stand-alone volume, I can’t help but think the stories should…you know…stand alone.  Most do, but there are others that absolutely require finding the referenced nightmare on Dailynightmare.com.  Good luck with that search.  They don’t make it easy.

And…The Banal and horribly obvious, I liked this book, and here’s where I try to get you to like it too.  It kicks ass.  There are writers in this work that are worth knowing.  There are stories in this book that will rob you of sleep.  Baby Candle, my God and Goddess, did more to freak me out than most horror movies.   The visuals I got from the text alone affected me more deeply than the visual horror in movies.  READ this book!  Do it.

All in all, an awesome return for very little cost and a quick, enjoyable read.  Out of a six pack of decent stout, I’d give this one 4 of the 6, though you can read the volume in the time it takes to drink 2.

buy it here.

Reviewed by Laura Langford

Manufacturer of Sorrow (Eldritch), by Michelle Scalise

I love poetry and I love horror. Unsurprisingly, I have a soft spot for horror poetry. Unfortunately, like many expressions of horror, the amount of subpar work by cheap, gimmicky hacks makes the entire genre I adore look like shit. Because of that, I tend to be pretty damn harsh on poetry. Unless I like it, then I glow like a worm on Christmas eve and spew my joy all over you (yes, the pathetic imagery was intentional). It’s worth keeping that in mind while I talk about Michelle Scalise’s The Manufacturer of Horror.

After reading the first few poems, I set the book aside. There was some solid imagery and I was getting a sense of a strong emotional core, but that was buried under language that was too self-conscious and clunky with little to no sense of rhythm. Those problems tend to kill poetry for me, drawing my attention to the individual words instead of losing myself in the connections between them.

Luckily for me, I picked it up again and “Cat”, which deals with the loss of a child via mythology, hit me right where it needed to. The flow pulled me along effortlessly, the images were sharp and the heart was laid bare. The same goes with the immediate followup, “Blue Rose Tattoo”.

From that point, the reading got much better. There are still several moments where Michelle lets the words get away from her, but the work becomes much stronger from that point onward. By the last third of the book, every single poem just goddam nails it. “Close the Door” is a deft dance of fear and desire intertwined, “Posthumous Voices” winds and wraps and tickles its way into the worst parts inside and “Her Little Blue Pills” just plain kicked my ass.

There are quite a few damn fine poems here that straddle that razor line of taking nightmarishly specific horrors and translating them into a universal experience in a way that breathes naturally and many of the others simply have a line or two that throw the experience for me. The good definitely outweighs the bad and the great is some serious shit, especially for the price (currently $4.84 from the publisher). It just makes me sad that I was almost completely put off by the placement of some of the worst poems available here right at the start of the book. Skip to “Cat” and you’ll do well by yourself.

Cover art: Picture covers usually don’t do anything for me, but I have to admit to something evocative of the image. Designer Eleanor Bennett uses an image that distinctly feminine sense of loss and disquiet with a slight touch of rage that pervades the work within. However, as tends to be a common problem with picture covers, the title and byline look disconnected from the artwork. The effect is like something done in MSpaint and makes the whole appear less professional.

Buy it directly from Eldritch Press here.

Reviewed by Anton Cancre