Another NEW Review of A Red Witch, Every Which Way!

Another wonderful new review of "A Red Witch, Every Which Way" (the collaborative poetry book by j/j hastain & I , published this year by Hysterical Books), written by Stephanie Kaylor on Goodreads. (I'm not sure how I missed this, because it looked as if I had "liked" the review, but I don't remember reading it until today. Maybe I'm having a mental glitch, but in any case, here's the review):

"One side a positive/ healing/fetish violence./One side a negative/stab wound/fantasy/reality./Never ending hemorrhaging hemisphere. Never/ending lavish/light."

This collaborative book felt like a haunted house-- disturbing yet deliciously so, a journey one walks into and doesn't want to leave despite the grotesque nature of it all; the internal, the walls, the decay, the macabre and its traces. The interviews at the end were as rich as the poems, breaking down the barrier between process & product as swiftly as they did the same with the bodily & textual."

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31395925-a-red-witch-every-which-way

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The book reviewed is available via Amazon HERE - https://www.amazon.com/Red-Witch-Every-Which-Way/dp/0940821044/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483005994&sr=1-6

The book reviewed is also available from Hysterical Books HERE - http://www.hystericalbooks.com/product-page/1a2d7e83-4bef-31d5-09e1-3326ee271c09

And it is also available from the Blood Pudding Press shop HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/473901408/new-a-red-witch-every-which-way-2016?ref=shop_home_feat_1

A NEW Review of A Red Witch, Every Which Way!

I just got quite excited because I noticed this 5 star review of j/j hastain and I's collaborative poetry book, "A Red Witch, Every Which Way" which appeared via Amazon earlier this month!

Meanwhile, I didn't know if anyone was even reading the book, so unexpectedly encountering a review that calls it Weirdly Beautiful (and mentions Frank Stanford!) feels pretty giddily great!

Here's the review followed by the Amazon link. Thank you Wayne F. Burke!

"A macabre work full of gory details and with a kind of surrealism that makes the reading of it a delightful adventure. "Pond scum will burst/out the eyes/once the eyes have been/revised into a film" (New Superhero), "...Box/elder stability/yearns for torn pages/in a series of open books" (Clawing At the Confessional), "Meniscus pirouettes/into maximus piranhas/chiming within/broken bones" (Conjured Talisman), "thinning/ossein to massage/scrim by which to scry/mutant shrapnel made" (Access Achieved Then Denied).

Weirdly beautiful language usage, full of surprises, twists and turns, and wordplay: language adroitly used, as in "Paradoxical Flight": "when a road kill/cat/black/silk cradles a/hyper notch/broken down/purring/crotch panel/rotting neural/blotch/an aural/round path/so partial/pussy extract/carefully oozing/from new particles/networks/jet stream/proving/an either or/model..."

Does it make sense to me? Hell, no. Does it matter? Again, no. As someone once said to the late Frank Sanford concerning his work, "I don't understand it, but I know what you mean."

These examples I've used should not be construed as representative of a flighty or loose style of writing because this is a disciplined work of serious stature also with an underlying structural design (3 "Acts"). I gather the last part of this statement intuitively and cannot say I have the slightest idea what the structure consists of. And you know what? It does not matter. This is a book to read and reread. A phantasmagorical journey where "Horses run through hoarse/barns. Hemlines narrow their slits." A book that asks such deep questions as "How do we engrave an orifice?" and answers "Coagulate all the swag/down our throats and then/gag ourselves..." Readers--enjoy."

https://www.amazon.com/Red-Witch-Every-Which-Way/dp/0940821044/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483005994&sr=1-6

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The book can also be acquired via the Hysterical Books website HERE - http://www.hystericalbooks.com/product-page/1a2d7e83-4bef-31d5-09e1-3326ee271c09

And via my own Blood Pudding Press shop HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/473901408/new-a-red-witch-every-which-way-2016?ref=shop_home_feat_1

NEW in The Rising Phoenix Review - Blood on the unpillowed cases

"My fireworks are not even in control
of the red blood cells turning
into glowing alien space ships

dripping down. An onslaught
of tiny strobe lights, of red snow
hitting my windshield.

Three dead birds on the top of my head
had wanted to fly inside my brain,
but never made it past the cracked hat."

from my poem "Blood on the unpillowed cases", newly appearing within The Rising Phoenix Review 

more HERE - https://therisingphoenixreview.com/2016/10/29/blood-on-the-unpillowed-cases-by-juliet-cook/

NEW in The Rising Phoenix Review!

"The Blob scared me when I was a little girl.

I would scream inside my own head
and then mentally hurl The Blob until it broke
through a window and entered the house across the street.

Was it my fault if it grabbed someone there?
Was it my fault for not screaming out loud
to let them know The Blob was coming?"

from my poem "Trigger Loving Blob", newly published at The Rising Phoenix Review!

more HERE - https://therisingphoenixreview.com/2016/10/14/trigger-loving-blob-by-juliet-cook/

(also, my Trigger Loving Blob #2 appeared in Thank You For Swallowing last week, which can be accessed in the post below this one).

NEW Thank You for Swallowing (Toxic Masculinity)!

"Was it my fault because of whatever
I was wearing? A life-sized pussy inside a Blob
deserves it. Deserves to be shrunken down."

from my poem "Trigger-Loving Blob #2" inside the new issue of Thank You for Swallowing

(I wasn't thinking of Trump's blob-like pussy comment when I wrote this poem, because that particular blobulating of his had not been revealed yet - but I will admit, I think that less than a week after that video was revealed is a fitting time for this poem to be published).

HERE - https://thankyouforswallowing.wordpress.com/2016/10/12/volume-2-issue-3-2/

Barbaric Restraint - three new poems of mine are up at Yellow Chair Review Issue 8

"Some men think that restraining another
man equates to breaking the bones
of his face into tiny pieces."

The first three lines from my three Barbaric Restraint poems, up at the NEW Yellow Chair Review Issue 8.

More HERE - http://www.yellowchairreview.com/single-post/2016/09/26/Three-Poems-by-Juliet-Cook

Queen of Cups Issue Nineteen (Juliet Cook and The Hierophant)!

"I replaced brains with hearts then wanted to rip my heart out,
then thought about pouring another heavy dose
of sweet cream into the latest small bird coffin."

I'm quite excited to have three of my poems appearing in this week's Queen of Cups!

Thank you very much to editor Sarah Sousa for choosing these three poems - "Everyone Handles Death Differently", "House of Her Cards" and "Batter Up".

HERE- http://tinyletter.com/QueenofCups/letters/queen-of-cups-issue-nineteen-juliet-cook-and-the-hierophant

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(At first I thought it seemed odd that the card drawn for me was The Hierophant, but this interpretation of that card makes sense to me - "The appearance of this card can also point to a problem you are having with all of the above, your inability to conform to institutional demands and follow a pre set program, and your disinclination to give up freedom and individuality for the benefit or a larger group".

In fact, that description seems to fit especially well with my "Batter Up" poem, whose content largely derived from sometimes feeling as if even nontraditional realms, such as poetry land, sometimes seem to feel like some sort of semi-institutionalized circle jerk of a side taking, cake flinging popularity contest, whereas I have no intention of taking any one side of any one chair.)