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melanie_page's review
4.0
"I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit."
I feel similarly about the title of Robert Vaughan's newest chapbook. Once upon a time my husband and I giggled because he couldn't read the title properly. Don't be fooled, though: the title isn't rhyming for "cute" sake, it really is selling content.
Itty bitty stories (prose poems, flash fiction, what have you) are divided into (mostly) two (diptychs) or three (triptychs) sections. The pieces are broken up and have titles to reflect that, with names such as "Two Faces" or "3 C's" or "Mother/Father/Clown" or "Lawyers, Guns, & Money."
Some of the pieces had lines that read more like prose poetry, such as a question posed in "Three for Carol"--
The dance has hands that reach into us like hunger. Where did you go after we burst against each other?
The lines' poetic quality comes through in the imagery of hands and bursting, a quality I remember in his collection Microtones.
Other pieces have lines that are just fine as prose poetry, but I can see that the opportunity for line breaks might have been there. Still, Vaughan chooses to use prose poetry to tell a brief story, and one about bocce ball narrates but still surprises by creating breaks with commas--
This was before my father died dancing, on the end of a rope.
If you associate dancing with joy, like I do, they you will be just as surprised as I was when I made my pause with the comma and came to the hanged father. Yikes!
There were places where the comma use threw me off, and I wished the piece had been written with line breaks. One place that I re-read many times was in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles"--
We come, like soldiers in the camps, barbed-wire barrier. Or I do. Either you or me.
Since the piece is formatted like a story, my brain was prepared for the links that make a story go from A to B; however, the further into this piece I went, the more the lines got shorter and like poetry without line breaks, and so my brain started tripping on its shoelaces.
Vaughan also captures humor (often using dipshits) in a collection that takes on a love and lust. One dipshit leaves a relationship and "signs" it with his personal stench--
The weekend before you moved out, you farted in my sister's elevator and other people got on and you said my name and fanned the air. I pretended it was funny. By then you farted so many times I honestly thought it was me.
There is a broken heart that lingers under this collection, but one that tries to rise. Images of flying and wishing and hoping run throughout the collection and made my heart a little happy and a little hopeful.
I feel similarly about the title of Robert Vaughan's newest chapbook. Once upon a time my husband and I giggled because he couldn't read the title properly. Don't be fooled, though: the title isn't rhyming for "cute" sake, it really is selling content.
Itty bitty stories (prose poems, flash fiction, what have you) are divided into (mostly) two (diptychs) or three (triptychs) sections. The pieces are broken up and have titles to reflect that, with names such as "Two Faces" or "3 C's" or "Mother/Father/Clown" or "Lawyers, Guns, & Money."
Some of the pieces had lines that read more like prose poetry, such as a question posed in "Three for Carol"--
The dance has hands that reach into us like hunger. Where did you go after we burst against each other?
The lines' poetic quality comes through in the imagery of hands and bursting, a quality I remember in his collection Microtones.
Other pieces have lines that are just fine as prose poetry, but I can see that the opportunity for line breaks might have been there. Still, Vaughan chooses to use prose poetry to tell a brief story, and one about bocce ball narrates but still surprises by creating breaks with commas--
This was before my father died dancing, on the end of a rope.
If you associate dancing with joy, like I do, they you will be just as surprised as I was when I made my pause with the comma and came to the hanged father. Yikes!
There were places where the comma use threw me off, and I wished the piece had been written with line breaks. One place that I re-read many times was in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles"--
We come, like soldiers in the camps, barbed-wire barrier. Or I do. Either you or me.
Since the piece is formatted like a story, my brain was prepared for the links that make a story go from A to B; however, the further into this piece I went, the more the lines got shorter and like poetry without line breaks, and so my brain started tripping on its shoelaces.
Vaughan also captures humor (often using dipshits) in a collection that takes on a love and lust. One dipshit leaves a relationship and "signs" it with his personal stench--
The weekend before you moved out, you farted in my sister's elevator and other people got on and you said my name and fanned the air. I pretended it was funny. By then you farted so many times I honestly thought it was me.
There is a broken heart that lingers under this collection, but one that tries to rise. Images of flying and wishing and hoping run throughout the collection and made my heart a little happy and a little hopeful.
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