John F.D. Taff, LITTLE DEATHS--Right on the Mark

Taff, John F.D. Little Deaths. Books of the Dead Press, 2012. Kindle edition.

Recently, one of my FaceBook friends made an astute comment about contemporary horror:

I hate to say it: Horror is boring. Authors seem out of ideas, out of approaches.

The stuff I'm seeing … is average, for the most part; a few things are spectacular, but are not really horror: they blend things together, and have a high level of craft.

In general, there is too much reliance on zombies, zombies, zombies... Or vampires... Or serial killers... Or Cthulhu... Or they try to make it gory, just to shock or disturb (which fails -- I was a slasher film kid, come on! Savini, Romero, Cronenberg, etc).

Get with it folks! Have something to say. Dig deep. Study people other than King, Koontz, and the horror-boom guys of the '80s. There's more to life. Think differently.

This is not to say that there are no interesting recent takes on the conventional creatures—witness Joe McKinney’s energizing Dead World Series, Brett Talley’s Stoker-winning Lovecraftian pastiche That Which Should Not Be, and a host of other books that manage to invigorate older patterns.

But in some ways, horror does seem boring.

Having recently attended two cons that featured horror (I was a Special Guest at both, so perhaps got a closer look at things), I did see a surfeit of standards…especially zombies. But the others came into play as well. And having read manuscripts for a professional publisher of horror, I can attest to the number of neophytes that seem to think that more blood and gore equals better horror. Or, worse perhaps, a higher occurrence of harsh language (you know, the kind that used to be indicated in polite venues by d**n and now by f**k) equals better writing in general and, when used by particularly unappealing characters whose primary purpose in the story is—presumably—to be horrifically slaughtered by the maniac-of-the-hour, it constitutes good horror.

Good horror fiction is like anything else. Well-written. Carefully crafted. Thoughtfully conceived. And above all…imaginative.

Which brings me (finally) to John F.D. Taff’s neat collection, Little Deaths.

Occasionally, when I read a single-author collection, I leave with the impression that the author was straining to write enough stories to fill a book. The tales seem, as it were, of a piece. Something about tone, atmosphere, certainly about characters and settings make it clear that all of the stories came from the same imagination. And the collection seems limited by that sense.

Little Deaths is definitely not one of those collections. Nor is it merely another series of zombie stories, or vampire stories, or serial-killer stories.

In fact, there is essentially only one zombie, one vampire, and one mummy in the whole book…and they all appear in the same story, a quiet little gem called “The Tontine” that, in its own way, summarizes the history of horror as a popular genre.

Every tale seems intended to take readers into new dimensions of uncertainty, ambiguity, terror, and dread. Each—whether ringing a change on Lovecraft or Frankenstein or coming up with something entirely different—exists in its own little world, divorced from the rest; each is an individual, unanticipated journey of discovery.

Little Deaths is particularly well written. Taff uses words that might be outside many vocabulary ranges but always does so with a purpose. In one instance, the title of a story reveals itself to be a pun on two words—one typical for horror fiction, the other meticulously built from an obscure Latin root to support the entire narrative. (I’d identify which title, but that would in effect give the story away.)

Some favorites: “Bolts,” “The Water Bearer,” “Darkness upon the Void,” “The Mellified Man,” the above-mentioned “The Tontine,” “Box of Rocks,” and…well, just about everything in the collection. All well worth reading and thinking about.

Recommended.

Joe R. Lansdale's EDGE OF DARK WATER--And the River Flows on to the Sea

Joe R. Lansdale. Edge of Dark Water. New York: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2012. 304 pp. Cloth hardcover, $25.99. ISBN-10: 0316188433; ISBN-13: 978-0316188432. Kindle edition: 462kb. $12.99. ASIN B005Z24B9O.

The river flowed on like nothing had ever happened on it, to us or anyone else. It was just the river. I had the sudden idea it was like life, that river. You just flowed on it, and if there came a big rain, a flood or some such, and some of it was washed out, in time it would all wash back together. Oh, it might look some different, but it would be the same, really. It didn’t change, but the people on that river did. I knew I had. And Mama had, and so had Terry, and maybe Jinx—but with her it was hard to tell.  (291)

These lines from Joe R. Lansdale’s beautifully written Edge of Dark Water give away nothing of the plot of the novel—other than that there is a river involved, and four people—but in a larger sense it helps define the entire effect of reading this meticulously crafted novel.

Four people, each trying to escape something, all running away from something, set out on a barge on the Sabine River in East Texas, pursued by their pasts, their memories…and several vicious men determined to kill them or bring them back. They face natural disasters, they meet helpers and hinderers along the way, they confront issues of life and death, they come face to face with mortality, and eventually they arrive—altered physically and emotionally—at the aptly named Gladewater, a place of rest, regeneration and recovery. So much for the overt plot.

By itself, it is sufficiently interesting to keep readers involved over the 300 pages of the novel.

But what makes Edge of Dark Water more than just an engaging read and elevates it to the level of a deeply meaningful experience is the deft hand of master storyteller Joe R. Lansdale who, from the beginning, weaves intricate characters, at times explosive action, and a haunting sense of archetype and organic symbol into much more than just a well-handled plot.

From the first line, Lansdale introduces us to an other-world, an other-time, that is both here-and-now and sometime in an unspecified past. There is a bit of the conventional “Once upon a time” fairy-tale opening in the arresting first sentence: “That summer, Daddy went from telephoning and dynamiting fish to poisoning them with green walnuts.”  And that is appropriate, since many of the events in the novel are equally fairy-tale-like. There is a cruel step-father (sort of); a frightful ogre that seems more unstoppable force of nature than human; a wicked witch who lives in a tumble-down cottage deep in the woods; a small party that might almost be gypsies but that are actually refugees from the Great Dust Bowl in Oklahoma (one of the few time references in the novel); even a rather bland Prince Charming character who, for a brief time, offers shelter to the wanderers.

At the same time, there are several nicely un-obvious biblical references, ironic names that suggest important elements of characters’ make-ups and backgrounds, and a raft that—along with the colloquial tone of the narrator—suggests Huckleberry Finn and his voyage of discovery and maturation along a longer, but parallel river.

All of these disparate elements come together in Edge of Dark Water to create an at-times gentle, at-times terrifying story. Lansdale has chosen well: characters, landscape, episodes, language—all work to make the novel unforgettable.

Highly recommended.

G. N. Braun’s HAMMERED—‘There and Back Again’

G. N. Braun. Hammered: Memoir of an Addict. Legume Man Books, 29 February 2012. 180 pp. Trade paperback, $11.95. ISBN: ISBN-10: 0987159267 ISBN-13: 978-0987159267 Kindle edition: 462 kb. $2.99. ASIN: B007F2851W

Technically speaking, G. N. Braun’s Hammered is not horror. It is, as the subtitle bluntly announces, a “Memoir of an Addict” that recounts just as bluntly a near-lifelong history of drug abuse. It is told directly, in first person, with no attempts at justification or recriminations. And there is nary a ghost, a vampire, nor a zombie to be seen anywhere in it.

Except, of course, that it is horror, horror of the most disturbing sort because it is real, because it details the daily struggle one man faced with his choices and their consequences. What began as partly recreational use, partly self-prescribed therapy to dampen the memories of childhood abuse, descends inevitably into daily use, addiction, and dealing, until quite literally there is nothing left for him to look forward to.

And there are in fact monsters throughout. Ghosts—unnamed, almost invisible people who support Braun in his habit, who slide effortlessly into his life and just as effortlessly out of it, each taking with them a bit more of his humanity, of his soul. And Vampires—dealers who depend on the weakness of others for their own survival, who feed on the desperation addicts face every day, every hour, almost every moment they are without their drugs. And Zombies—mostly conspicuously Braun himself—whose life passes almost mindlessly as he finds himself incapacitated by his needs.

At times, he is all three together.

The book is frightening in its portrayal of the ease with which one can enter and remain in the drug culture, the casualness of drug use—shooting up within minutes of leaving rehab, for example, or living through a relationship with another person in which neither is ever entirely clean. It is frightening in its portrayal—mercifully brief but scathing nevertheless—of parents whose children mean less to them than their habits. It is frightening in its portrayal of a police system incapable of slowing, let alone stopping, the traffic…themselves brutal in their approach to the situation.

And yet it is ultimately hopeful. In the final pages, an opportunity arises for one final choice, one final experience with rehabilitation, this time underscored by Braun’s decision to change his life. And in the end, it is his own determination—not anti-drug therapies or rehab visits or external pressures from those around him—that enable him to get clean.

Hammered is arresting reading, difficult reading, not because it is poorly done but rather because it is flawlessly executed. It gives specifics, no matter how distasteful, when they are required to make the point clearly; it passes over other events when a generalized comment or passage is sufficient. It never gets bogged down in self-pity or complaint. Throughout, he recognizes that the choices, the decisions, the actions—no matter how he justifies them at the moment—are ultimately his own.

And that, finally, is his escape.

Recommended.

Joe McKinney's APOCALYPSE OF THE DEAD--A Creditable Addition to a Horror Tradition.

Apocalypse of the Dead. Pinnacle, November, 2010. 504 pp. Mass-market paperback. $6.99. ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-2359-2; ISBN-10: 0-7860-2359-7. Kindle edition: 665 kb. ASIN: B003VWC1Q0.

Joe McKinney’s Apocalypse of the Dead is a remarkable book.

It does for zombies what Stephen King’s magnificent The Stand did for the superflu.

It does for zombies what Robert R. McCammon’s equally powerful Swan Song did for nuclear winter.

It sets the zombies up as a force against which all humanity must battle … and then suggests that, after the first cataclysm, they are to a certain degree largely irrelevant.

In Apocalypse of the Dead, the virus-infected zombies introduced in Dead City breach the quarantine area along the Gulf of Mexico coastline of Texas and Louisiana, causing an outbreak in Florida that rapidly becomes world-wide. As with the superflu and nuclear winter, it takes only a single mistake, and the entire human race is almost completely destroyed.

Except for the handful of survivors here and there. Gathering as small groups at first, the individual enclaves become larger as they pick up others who have somehow escaped the zombies and—again in a parallel with The Stand and Swan Song—those larger groups begin what becomes essentially a pilgrimage to a place that offers hope and safety.

Along the way, they discover that, as bad as the zombie infestation has been, there is something even worse that threatens them at every step.

Other humans.

As the various groups travel, they encounter unanticipated dangers from uninfected humans … uninfected as far as the virus is concerned but deeply infected by inherent greed and hunger for power, by unfettered cruelty and bloodlust and madness.  While the zombies remain an ever-present threat, they recede from the foreground of events, eventually becoming little more than mindless tools for oppression and revenge as they are rounded up by unscrupulous characters and callously set loose upon innocents. They become unknowing instruments of premeditated murder.

Still, the small groups persist and eventually arrive at their goal, Grasslands in North Dakota, a sanctuary against the horrors of the outer world, walled off from the infected and the ripple-effects of social collapse.

To use The Stand again as a parallel … they finally arrive in Boulder.

Except that in truth, they are not in Boulder; they are in Las Vegas without knowing it. Apparent good gradually reveals itself as an evil more insidious, more threatening than the zombies outside the fences.

At the core of Apocalypse of the Dead is McKinney’s exploration of the potentials of the human heart for both darkness and light. Characters reach the point-of-no-return in their already shattered lives, when they must choose between the two options. Many die as a consequence of that choice.

Apocalypse is as difficult a novel as Dead City and Flesh Eaters because McKinney confronts unpleasant truths about the fragility of society and civilization, about the darkness that resides within each of his characters, about the choices some must make to turn their back on that darkness and struggle toward a greater good. It is simultaneously about damnation and redemption. And, again, choice. It is entrancing, at times disturbing, always fast-paced and thoughtful.

Recommended.

Elleeana is One Day Old Today

She—chosen Sprit—

Timeless, old beyond all Time—

Hovers eagerly,

Casts ancient eyes

Around GodFather's primal World

To reassure,

Imprint in deep

Remembery

All that Was

And yet to Be....

She—choice Spirit—

Breathes...once,

Twice,

A final time

Draws in Celestial Fire...

Descends

Through Spheres of Air,

Through Waters gathered beyond Heaven,

Descends as if on feather-down

To sweetly solid Earth...

To become

Your Child

Joe McKinney, DEAD CITY--One Man's Journey into Darkness

Joe McKinney. Dead City. Pinnacle, November 2006. 346 pp. Mass-market paperback. $6.99. ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-2358-5; ISBN-10: 0-7860-2358-9. Kindle edition, October 2010. ASIN: B0031Y17GY.

I don’t generally review two books by the same author sequentially. There are so many fascinating titles out there by so many strong writers that it seems a bit unfair to focus on one. But I was fortunate enough to receive both Joe McKinney’s Stoker Award-winning Flesh Eaters and the first novel in the sequence, Dead City¸ at the same time. And I must admit to a bit of curiosity on my part as to how the two might mesh.

As you can tell from the fact that this review exists, I was impressed.

Flesh Eaters (see my review at: http://michaelrcollings.blogspot.com/2012/05/joe-mckinneys-flesh-eaters-all-you.html) was essentially shot with a wide-angle lens, as it were. It took as its focus, not the experiences of a single individual, but those of several small groups, shifting attention from one to the other as the narrative developed. What emerged was a complex and complexly plotted re-creation of the consequences of the collision between natural disasters (a series of hurricanes) and an emergent virus that transformed victims into something like zombies, neither wholly dead nor wholly alive but virulently infectious and with an unflagging appetite for human flesh. Good hook—great novel.

Dead City, first published in 2006, five years before Flesh Eaters, works with the same basic landscape, but with several key alterations that make it quite a different book. It does not begin with the first of the hurricanes, as does Flesh Eaters. Instead it begins several weeks later, after the series of storms has struck and when the news of the disaster in Houston has become public—although the original readers of the earlier novel would have been without the detailed narrative that the latter undertakes.

Instead of Houston, this time the city involved is San Antonio; the hurricanes are a given, and the reality of the zombie-like creatures already known if not perhaps quite believed. And instead of several groups of survivors trying to make sense of the impossible, there is a single, small family at the core. Eddie Hudson; his wife, April; and their infant son, Andrew, have survived the storms. Eddie is away from home when the first of the zombies strike San Antonio; ironically, the creatures were among refugees from Houston welcomed into San Antonio. Almost immediately, as they shift from human to zombie, they spread the infection until the vast majority of people in San Antonio also turn.

The plot of Dead City is straightforward, almost linear—shot with a narrow-angle lens. Where Flesh Eaters moved from group to group, Dead City never leaves Eddie Hudson as he struggles, first to return to his home (where he finds that his wife and child have disappeared), then to find some base of authority for fighting against the zombies.

Ultimately, he realizes, there is none.

What results is an Odyssean quest-novel. A single survivor wandering through the infested streets of his city, meeting a number of friends and strangers (most of whom eventually die), having experiences with them, then moving on to new levels anxiety and terror. Each person he encounters helps him understand more about himself, about the cataclysmic change that has taken place in his world, and about the way individuals deal with horror.

One person talks. A former science teacher and participant in a web-circle of sites interested in zombies (even before they actually show up), he closes down his emotions to deal with the issues as if they were mental games. He discusses the philosophy of zombiism, the underlying questions of consciousness and responsibility, gabbling on even as the world around him crumbles.

Another takes refuge in humor. He laughs at the awkwardness of the infected. He irritates Eddied with his inability to take events seriously. He is an extreme example of the dark humor often attributed to doctors and police—you must laugh or you will cry. In his case, the laughter is tinged with the possibility of insanity.

Yet another simply shuts down. She refuses to take the few steps that might lead her to safety. Instead, at the destruction of everything she knows, she simply sits down and waits for death to approach.

One group owes its survival to science, only to have that same science grossly betray them. The physician that has gathered them is in fact using them as test cases to see if he can find a cure—not, it is implied, to help the infected millions, but because that is what he wishes to do. A scientist caught in his own experiment.

A second group has gathered through their faith…and in some senses, this is the only viable alternative that Hudson encounters in his wanderings. They are alive when he leaves them to continue his quest—rather appropriately, in a “godly” car—and the novel assures us as to their ultimate survival.

Each of these encounters, and other lesser ones, suggests something about human nature, about its flexibility in the face of horror, about what ultimately lies at its core.

And that core is…family.

Husband. Wife. Child.

Dead City shows several examples of families destroyed by the plague; but one survives. And for Hudson, that makes all of the horrors and terrors meaningful.

Different as it is from Flesh Eaters, Dead City nonetheless succeeds on its own merits. The two differ as, say, The Odyssey and The Aeneid differ: in scope, in complexity, in focus. Both are engaging, enjoyable (in a rather blood-thirsty way), and persuasive.

Recommended.

  

Joe McKinney's FLESH EATERS--All You Could Ask for and More

McKinney, Joe. Flesh Eaters. New York: Pinnacle/Kensington, April 2011. 390 pp. Mass-market paperback, $6.99. ISBN

Joe McKinney’s Bram Stoker Award-winning Flesh Eaters adroitly manages to perform a number of seemingly mutually exclusive balancing acts.

It is, from the first, a ‘natural disaster’ novel—in this case, the plot depending on the aftermath of three hurricanes battering the Texas coastline in as many weeks—yet the natural disasters are rarely followed closely. One, the third and most devastating, is merely mentioned as having occurred.

It is a ‘zombie’ novel, of course, with zombies appearing from every shadow and doorway, flooding the already flooded (with water) streets of Houston—yet the zombies remain mostly faceless and without identity, a backdrop of horror that counterpoints story and character.

It is an ‘action-adventure’ novel, with shoot-outs, hand-to-hand combat, frantic races to escape…only to find that the one opening for escape is guarded by federal troops willing to open fire on any survivors that attempt it. Yet the frenetic attempts of groups to survive never overshadow individuals and their private suffering and growth.

It is a ‘dysfunctional family’ novel on several levels, but it never becomes clogged in the minutiae of guilt and blame, of recrimination and anger. One family has begun to grow apart; the parents are increasingly separate in their thoughts and actions, while the thirteen-year-old daughter has begun the difficult transition from child to adult. Another is separated by the constraints of family pride and individual greed. It takes a disaster of monumental proportions to help the first discover its true identity and impel the second into final dissolution.

It is a ‘caper’ novel, with seven million dollars at stake, shifting hands among the characters as the plot develops…but the heist never overwhelms the more serious consequences facing individuals.

But most of all, perhaps, it is a ‘horror’ novel that almost revels in graphic description…but that ultimately understands that people are more important than horrors and that they may themselves become the most unspeakable of monsters.

It is all of these, and more—and in a sense none of them.

Flesh Eaters is in fact a multi-faceted, complex narrative that integrates all of these elements into a single, coherent narrative. McKinney moves from one sub-genre to another with seamless facility, balancing each against the other, so that in the end, readers focus on the individual struggles of people they have come to care about. He shows characters faltering beneath the weight of the struggle, succumbing to their greed and pride, allowing themselves to become less than their potential until, eventually, they destroy themselves and each other. And he shows others rising to the occasions, developing beyond what even they might have believed possible, giving their all to protect others, especially those they love. The three members of the Norton family go through the crucible of fire and flood, famine and disease…and zombies—only to emerge larger than they were, more aware of both strengths and weaknesses in themselves and in each other. This growth, this development of potential makes feasible—and acceptable—the final pages of the novel.

McKinney has taken a genre-plot and transcended its inherent weaknesses—its tendency to assume that the more zombies there are, the more mindless blood and guts and sex, the better the story—to deliver a novel that fulfills all of the expectations of that genre and at the same time delivers much more.

Recommended.

Other books by Joe McKinney:

Apocalypse of the Dead. Pinnacle, November, 2010. 504pp. Mass-market paperback. $6.99. ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-2359-2; ISBN-10: 0-7860-2359-7.

Dead City. Pinnacle, November 2006. 346 pp. Mass-market paperback. $6.99. ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-2358-5; ISBN-10: 0-7860-2358-9.

Dodging Bullets. Gutter Books, September 2010. 202pp. Trade paperback. ISBN-10: 0982688717; ISBN-13: 978-0982688717

Mutated. Pinnacle, September, 2012. 352 pp. Mass-market paperback, $7.99. ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-2929-7; ISBN-10: 0-7860-2929-3.

Quarantined. Lachesis Publishing, March 2009. 216 pp., Trade paperback. ISBN-10: 1897370652; ISBN-13: 978-1897370650. Kindle edition: Permuted Press, 2011. ASIN: B0058ZXD5G.

The Crossing. Creeping Hemlock Press, March 2012. 80pp. Trade paperback, ISBN: 978-0-9847394-4-8.

The Red Empire and Other Stories. Redrum Horror, January 2012. 338 pp. Trade paperback. ISBN: 978-0-9847519-0-7.

Spring Violets -- Filamental Emblem

Spring invites bursts

      of violets,

bloom and bud in

      ring-rounds softly

                         green;

They raise pale heads

      from loneliness,

flare toward light

      warmly strong and

                         new,

Glisten as if

      sequined where white

dayshine touches.

      Fractal petals

                         sheen,

Welcome springtime

      with brushwork stains...

purples, pinks, whites

      tinged with sacral 

                         blue

Commemorate

      with vegetal

resurrection

      life over death

                         again.

Verbal and Visual--When Words and Pictures Combine

Boston, Bruce. Anthropomorphisms. Illustrated by Marge Simon. Elektrik Milk Press, 2012. Trade paperback, 74 pp. ISBN 978-0-9828554-6-1.

Simon, Marge, and Sandy DeLuca. Vampires, Zombies & Wanton Souls.  Elektrik Milk Press, 2012. Trade paperback, $17.00. 156 pp. ISBN-10: 0982855443 ISBN-13: 978-0982855447.

I first developed an interest in the interplay between the verbal and the visual while in graduate school. It is impossible to do graduate study in 17^th-century English literature without encountering Emblems, which were among the most popular verse forms of the time; or without becoming aware of how intensely poets such as John Milton, George Herbert, and Richard Crashaw endeavored, each in his own way, to integrate their verses with painting and sculpture.

For me, the encounter would resonate not only through my studies but throughout my life. Any of you who have followed my postings of “Filamental Emblems”—themselves based largely on the Emblem tradition of juxtaposing a poem with a visual representation of the same image, symbol, or theme—will immediately recognize my tribute to the affinity of the two forms of expression

Imagine, then, my delight at receiving, almost simultaneously, two collections of poetry in which individual poems were accompanied by artwork that explored the same ideas…less illustrations than re-creations of the poetry itself. To varying degrees, the experience of reading these collections becomes a kind of mental tennis-match, with interest and understanding passing back and forth between the verses and the artwork.

Simon and DeLuca have produced a beautiful work in Vampires, Zombies & Wanton Souls. For each entry, meticulously crafted painting faces a poem that says directly (or as directly as poetry can) what the picture represents. The paintings are less horrific than evocative, most in color (either vibrant of muted, depending upon the subject), a number in black and white—but either way, uniquely appropriate to the verse opposite. Generally DeLuca prefers a bold, heavy style, with distinctive outlining that suggests the emotionalism of German Expressionism. While few are overtly blood-thirsty, most reflect the grotesque or the bizarre, again appropriate to the subjects.

Simon’s verse works in much the same way. Each is controlled by the page-length so there is no spill-over onto the following side; this allows the reader/viewer to absorb both the verbal and the visual simultaneously, as it were, to receive the full impact of each…and both. In keeping with the stridently ‘modernist’ style of the artwork, most of the poems are free verse. Her primary structural mode is the stanza, with poems ranging from assemblages of single-line stanzas, to couplets and triplets, to varying line-counts within longer poems. Lines tend to be short and enjambed, which together help create an almost colloquial tone, even when the artistry of the poem underlies a surface simplicity.

All of this is in keeping with the theme of the book as expressed in the title, Vampires, Zombies & Wanton Souls. None of them are particularly ‘frightening’; rather, they stand for outsiders, for the cast-offs of society who are finally being given a chance to speak for themselves. They do not speak in formal, metered verse; nor should they. They create their own rhythms, manipulate language according to their individual personalities. The result is poetry that seems to read as directly as prose while at the same time maintaining the standards of poetry. At this kind of writing, Simon has demonstrated herself a master.

The final two entries in the collection are in fact prose rather than verse. The first is DeLuca’s “Tricks of Light,” a darkly somber tale of a sleep-deprived woman in New York, and the shadows—and the man—that haunt her. Simon’s “Confessions of a Visually Challenged Vampire,” in which near-sightedness has unanticipated, and comic, repercussions for a newly-turned vamp. As unalike as they are, both fit neatly into the book’s theme and provide a solid conclusion to a walk through death, unDeath, and darkness.

Boston’s Anthropomorphisms is simpler in context, structure, and execution than the more elaborate—and more colorful—Vampires, Zombies & Wanton Souls. To say that is not, however, is not a criticism. Boston has a specific goal in  mind, and the way he handles his verse is perfectly consonant with that goal.

The first two lines of the first poem read:

If assassin people

were the world….

The opening lines of the next poem are:

If asteroid people

were the world….

And the final poem begins: “If wind people were the world….”

Since the poems are arranged alphabetically, the structure allows Boston to explore the world and beyond and imagine how the world would be if others were transformed into people: Bird, Cat, Champagne, Cockroach (more than a touch of horror in that one), Dragon, Gargoyle, Gray (with its evocation of “pale dawns and pallid sunsets” to describe an entirely different kind of horror), Lice, Parchment, Star, Werewolf, and a host of others in between.

The trick is, of course, that many people in our world are the kinds of people the poems describe. Each piece uses calmly controlled language—even when describing ostensibly outré possibilities…possibilities that become more real as each poem progresses. When “Fox and Chickens” completes its almost naturalistic re-creation of the rivalry between the two species, it concludes with a stanza that, in another poem with another title, would neatly represent our world:

If fox and chicken people

were the world it would be

a game of fang and beak

and explosive violence,

the amoral survival

of evolutionary design.

In a form as allegorical as the best of Chaucer and as monitory as the beast-fable tradition, Boston wrings yet another change on conventional genres—in his verse, the animals do not just talk and act as if they were people, they transform into them.

At the same time, he is careful to indicate that his verse is tied to the world. Each opening line reminds us that there are “assassin people” and “lice people” and all of the rest. Only when they become the only kind of “people” do the horrors and wonders of their excesses and extremes become clear. We are the others; the others are us.

Boston’s verses are accompanied by eight line drawing by Marge Simon. Not as colorful as Deluca’s, they are ideal for the poems. Their apparent simplicity matches the direct tone of the poems, but watch carefully—the truth is in the details, as in “Assassin People” and “Bone People.”

Both books are written by craftsmen and artists (of the visual and the verbal kinds). They are delightful to read and to behold. Highly recommended.