'otherwordly disturbance'--At night, the dead

On the shadowy heels of the many multi-faceted reviews from the Read Write Poem Virtual Book Tour (see previous entry), Lisa Ciccarello's darkly lovely chapbook, At night, the dead: , which was published by Blood Pudding Press several months back, has now been graced with another review in the new issue of 'Prick of the Spindle':

http://www.prickofthespindle.com/reviews/3.3/_small_presses/ciccarello/at_night_the_dead.htm

Thank you to reviewer Erin McNight for her wonderfully evocative consideration of this tome. Here are a few excerpts from her assessment:

“Located within the staccato-stylized house is a narrator ‘learning to knit [them] a new home’ with spare language woven by her breath. This narrator comes to appreciate that ‘The dead need chandeliers’ and ‘someone to smile at,’ that ‘they still have what matters’ and rely on the voice of the living to interpret their coming and the guise of night to expose what is typically obscured by daylight.

And it is under this cover of darkness that the collection transcends predictability in rendering vignettes of otherworldly disturbance. The desperate longing of Ciccarello’s dead is suspended just beyond the thick boundary of text isolating each poem as tomb-like: the repeating ‘At night, the dead:’ caption functioning as a black mound of words excavated from Ciccarello’s exposed plots. The demarcation of her fright-filled house, however, shifts in the same imperceptible manner as her poems’ repeating lead-in--by the collection’s end, the dead have penetrated both the narrator’s space and the reader’s psyche with their doleful longing for kinship and remembrance…

At night, the dead: is a daring, resolute grouping of poetic works that meets the reader’s demand for melancholic language and uncanny image, and exceeds the expectation of how lasting the influence of a sinister mood may prove.”

Perhaps after partaking of McKnight's review, you shall wish to acquire a copy of At night, the dead: for your very own writerly/readerly frisson and/or artifact collection. If so, please visit the Blood Pudding Press etsy shop at http://www.bloodpuddingpress.etsy.com/ or feel free to contact me about an art trade or review copy.

At night, the dead: might also make a delightful little gift for the Halloween season (and speaking of the Halloween season, check out my latest entry on DOPPELGANGRENE)...