DeMisty's status updates without so much noise. Still, I'm on twitter and google+.
I am a: writer, academic, lecturer of English in a public university.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Review: The Laughing Game
The Laughing Game by Marianne Kunkel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Laughing Game is only a chapbook, which is too bad because after page 26, which is the last page, I wanted to keep reading. Poems out of a dysfunctional but loving (and loved) family, of past loves and present joys—no sentimentality but touching—make for a compelling collection. I just wanted more.
The title piece, a candid but quick look at her cousin’s anorexia, begins with the decay of a tooth, a visible “BB-sized black mark.” The imagery throughout the poem is strikingly effective. All the dismal, gritty, but somehow uplifting poems of a problemed and later absent father are somehow refreshing in spite of their subject.
I loved “My Summer Fling with Abraham Lincoln” which ends with the president leaving “before I could straighten his charcoal lapels/ before he saw my eyes, shiny-wet like pennies.”
I look forward to reading more work from Kunkel. Maybe a full collection?
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