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Tuesday 7 September 2021

MONSTRUM POETICA by Jezzy Wolfe

 

When was the last time you walked through the woods? Checked under your bed? Walked down into your basement alone? Monstrum Poetica by Jezzy Wolfe is an invocation of boogeymen, a graveyard seance, a summons to horrors both large and small. This is a collection of poems that bite, scratch, snarl, and bleed. Filled with magnificent beasts and the sounds of cracked bones and broken teeth, Wolfe takes her readers through the folklore and mythology behind some of the world’s most terrifying creatures.

Here you’ll meet jinn, vampires, werewolves, and wendigos, tangle with mermaids, wraiths, aswang and hellhounds. It’s a dance of specters and spiders, a logbook of limbs and lost persons. If you’re lucky, you’ll learn what to do when the lights flicker, when the lightbulb goes out, when darkness becomes your only friend, and the next time you hear a whisper, or feel the hot breath of fear on your neck, you’ll remember what do, where to go…

Because this is a book that teaches you how to hunt monsters, how to track fiends, how to bathe in the blood and digestive juices all of things that go bump in the night. Carry this manual with you. Hold it close, memorize its contents for these poems are warnings, a resounding alarm.

I suggest you head them.

They might just save your life. 



Firstly, I want to thank Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi and Raw Dog Screaming Press for sending me a copy of this fascinating book. And secondly, I love the cover.

I always get excited when I receive a book of poetry from RDSP because they publish some gems. This time I got two!

So I decided to start with this one. 

I'm a huge fan of supernatural creatures and urban myths, so I was looking forward to getting lost in the forest of words in front of me. This book didn't disappoint because it's full of deep and disturbing tales of mythology, folklore, urban legends, and even pop culture. And each of these tales is presented in poems that either fill you with wonder, make your skin crawl, or bring out a smile because the sheer darkness captured within this collection of artful words works so well.

Something else I really enjoyed was the way each section is introduced with a bit of handy information about the many creatures—some more obscure than others—before each poem delves into their gloomy underbelly with nightmarish and vivid precision.

It's almost a manual for the furry, fanged, decayed, dead, undead and so many more monsters one might encounter in the darkest of places, on the spookiest night under a watchful moon.

I think this one's a keeper because I really enjoyed the ride through the landscape of Monstrum Poetica.

This is a fantastic collection. If you're into poetry intricately woven with the arcane, then you should definitely check it out. 




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