sex & violence

Kristy Bowen is a master of conjuring the treacheries of femininity. In sex & violence, she draws upon such diverse sources as Plath’s Ariel poems (here collaged piece by piece to make her own poems so much stranger, and newer, and hauntingly “eerie,” as in the absence of the missing, familiar words, and the missing, familiar woman) and, to conjure the contrary, poems set to dumb blonde jokes, where the result of two blondes “fall(ing) down a hole” is that “the wishbone of their throats harbor tiny fish and assorted birdery” and that, after murder, their bodies can be found “placed so careful in their beds each morning.” Here is a book to beware of, dear reader. You’ll find yourself trapped inside Bowen’s “enormous wedding cake—a claustrophobic swirl of sugar and lace,” with “Horses and house fires” placed right next to it, and in its feverish dream of kisses and ruin, you won’t want to ever escape.

—Gillian Cummings