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A review by ninjamuse
Monster Verse: Poems Human and Inhuman by Tony Barnstone
2.0
In brief: A collection of poetry about monsters, whether they’re human or mythological or outsiders or something else entirely.
Thoughts: I have much the same thoughts about this collection as I did about the last Pocket Poets book from these editors, Poems Dead and Undead. It’s fine, a nice mix of poems and styles, with maybe a few more this time that appeal to my taste in poetry, but it suffers from the same narrow focus. There are a lot of Western monsters, creatures out of classical mythology, and movie monsters, and a fair number of Western canon, classic lit type sources (Poe, Shakespeare, Beowulf, etc.), and not a lot of, for instance, monsters from minority cultures.
I was also disappointed by the inclusion of human monsters. Not because there aren’t monstrous humans—there’s a serial killer in the collection, after all—but because their definition of “monster” includes loners and disfigured people. I’d have liked to see more meditations on actually horrible people, or minority voices about oppression, instead of the kind of tame and questionable humans the editors included.
There’s also this thing the editors do which is neat in small doses, of putting poems on the same topic side by side for comparison. Two poems about vampires or mermaids? Great. Interesting. Five poems? Gets to be a little boring and makes me wonder why they felt including that many was important.
My last couple poetry reviews, I’ve cited poems from the collections I enjoyed. I don’t think there really are any this time? I mean, okay, it opens with “The Day the Saucers Came” by Neil Gaiman, which I’ve always liked, and I’ve already mentioned Shakespeare and Beowulf, but beyond that? There’s nothing particularly memorable.
Overall, this gets a solid “this was fine” and from now on, I’m going to check poetry editors because clearly, this duo makes me grumpy.
5/10
To bear in mind: Contains some poems about monstrous actions, including murder, sexual assault, cannibalism, and the deliberate spreading of HIV.
Thoughts: I have much the same thoughts about this collection as I did about the last Pocket Poets book from these editors, Poems Dead and Undead. It’s fine, a nice mix of poems and styles, with maybe a few more this time that appeal to my taste in poetry, but it suffers from the same narrow focus. There are a lot of Western monsters, creatures out of classical mythology, and movie monsters, and a fair number of Western canon, classic lit type sources (Poe, Shakespeare, Beowulf, etc.), and not a lot of, for instance, monsters from minority cultures.
I was also disappointed by the inclusion of human monsters. Not because there aren’t monstrous humans—there’s a serial killer in the collection, after all—but because their definition of “monster” includes loners and disfigured people. I’d have liked to see more meditations on actually horrible people, or minority voices about oppression, instead of the kind of tame and questionable humans the editors included.
There’s also this thing the editors do which is neat in small doses, of putting poems on the same topic side by side for comparison. Two poems about vampires or mermaids? Great. Interesting. Five poems? Gets to be a little boring and makes me wonder why they felt including that many was important.
My last couple poetry reviews, I’ve cited poems from the collections I enjoyed. I don’t think there really are any this time? I mean, okay, it opens with “The Day the Saucers Came” by Neil Gaiman, which I’ve always liked, and I’ve already mentioned Shakespeare and Beowulf, but beyond that? There’s nothing particularly memorable.
Overall, this gets a solid “this was fine” and from now on, I’m going to check poetry editors because clearly, this duo makes me grumpy.
5/10
To bear in mind: Contains some poems about monstrous actions, including murder, sexual assault, cannibalism, and the deliberate spreading of HIV.