2/27/09

review

my itty bitty review of Catherine Meng’s dusie kollektiv 3 poetry chapbook ‘LOST WORKBOOK W/LETTERS TO DEER’:

This dusie kollektiv 3 chapbook especially strikes my fancy from its unique design to its charming title to the quirky curios within. I can visualize these adorable little booklets spilling forth from misshapen baskets at craft fair tables, mixed with multicolored fabric poppies or battered pointe shoes. I can see them at bake sale tables accompanied by giant blonde brownies and tiny lime crèmes. I can see them snuck into public lavatories, placed slightly askew atop shiny silver dispensers for pink hand soap. I can see them at a Rasputina concert in a white wicker basket with Victorian hankies and vials of strange notions & potions.

The retro looking sewing instruction cover and ever so slightly crooked pages strike me as both endearing and well-crafted. I feel like I’m privy to a quaint personal art project. I feel like I’m holding precision ephemera. I hear the click of knitting needles and feel the silky wisp of vintage seam binding remnants.

The poems function based on their own peculiar logic and complement each other well. They seem both curiously amusing and quite significant in their own odd way.

This chapbook puts me in mind of pinking shears carefully cutting serrated edges.

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