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xterminal's review
4.0
Ander Monson, Vacationland (Tupelo Press, 2005)
Vacationland is a book that will bait and switch you, if you know nothing about it going in. The cover is one of those desperately happy, if somewhat pathetic, postcard images that seventies PR firms created to try and draw tourism to dying areas. You look at that—or I do, anyway—and think “fluff, surface, bubbly sucrose-laden doggerel.” Well, it turns out that Ander Monson consciously chose that cover (I'm assuming a level of control here without which the cover wouldn't make sense) out of a kind of sense of existential irony that would have made Sartre wet his pants in fear. For Vacationland is a litany of despair, death, and quotidian brutality unlike anything I've ever encountered in a book of poetry. Sylvia Plath had nothing on Ander Monson's depression modern.
“Chain of being, chain around my ankle
that keeps me always tethered to the earth,
that keeps my awful long-gone emphysema uncle
underneath the crusty surface...”
(--”Self-Portrait with Transgression”)
That's one of the lighter bits, where you can see a sliver of hope shining under the dead, decaying leaves. Never fear, it's tied to a string, and the purblind, yet chthonic, god that watches over the universe where Monson's poems are set (how close it is to the actual Upper Peninsula of Michigan I've no idea) is going to tug it backwards when you get close enough.
In other words, this is not work for the easily-depressed, or for the weak of heart. But is is very well-constructed, and if your worldview naturally comes with a dark tinge, you may well find a great deal to empathize, or identify, with in Monson's litanies. *** ½
Vacationland is a book that will bait and switch you, if you know nothing about it going in. The cover is one of those desperately happy, if somewhat pathetic, postcard images that seventies PR firms created to try and draw tourism to dying areas. You look at that—or I do, anyway—and think “fluff, surface, bubbly sucrose-laden doggerel.” Well, it turns out that Ander Monson consciously chose that cover (I'm assuming a level of control here without which the cover wouldn't make sense) out of a kind of sense of existential irony that would have made Sartre wet his pants in fear. For Vacationland is a litany of despair, death, and quotidian brutality unlike anything I've ever encountered in a book of poetry. Sylvia Plath had nothing on Ander Monson's depression modern.
“Chain of being, chain around my ankle
that keeps me always tethered to the earth,
that keeps my awful long-gone emphysema uncle
underneath the crusty surface...”
(--”Self-Portrait with Transgression”)
That's one of the lighter bits, where you can see a sliver of hope shining under the dead, decaying leaves. Never fear, it's tied to a string, and the purblind, yet chthonic, god that watches over the universe where Monson's poems are set (how close it is to the actual Upper Peninsula of Michigan I've no idea) is going to tug it backwards when you get close enough.
In other words, this is not work for the easily-depressed, or for the weak of heart. But is is very well-constructed, and if your worldview naturally comes with a dark tinge, you may well find a great deal to empathize, or identify, with in Monson's litanies. *** ½
coffeeandink's review
Companion to [b:Other Electricities|80191|Other Electricities Stories|Ander Monson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170979879s/80191.jpg|77433]. It doesn't stun me the way the novel does, but it has similar moments of loveliness (loneliness) and grief.
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