Two great short reviews of Housecat Kung Fu by Geoffrey Gatza
At Amazon reviewed y Kevin Killian
& Galatea Resurrects #12 reviewed by Ruth Lepson
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1DR9ZQG8CWXVP/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
<http://www.amazon.com/review/R1DR9ZQG8CWXVP/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm>
http://galatearesurrection12.blogspot.com/2009/05/housecat-kung-fu-by-geoffr
ey-gatza.html
<http://galatearesurrection12.blogspot.com/2009/05/housecat-kung-fu-by-geoff
rey-gatza.html>
Buy Here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979411963/ref=cm_rdp_product
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979411963/ref=cm_rdp_product>
Geckos with Bristles, May 21, 2009
By Kevin Killian
Looks like mighty little Meritage Press has plucked forth another winner,
this one with a nursery edge that will have your infants gripping the bars
of their cribs and swatting those cut-out animals that dangle, like indents,
above their faces on showy Kid Calder mobiles. Buffalo-based Geoffrey Gatza
has long been a man of the animals, and now he has put together a complete
collection of animal poems that invites comparison to similar efforts by
Marianne Moore and Hilaire Belloc. The poems are illustrated with period
woodcuts from a variety of childrens's literature texts of bygone eras, so
the glamour of the antique falls gently here and there over what might
otherwise be rather a sharp menu to feed baby with.
In fact I have a feeling that kids aren't the primary audience for Housecat
Kung Fu, though there is nothing that would scare or offend any redblooded
kid. Well, there is a Bambi like transition from two giraffes necking, to
one of them being taken away and hanged by the neck. But children seem to
adore violence and they might well laugh at the surreal practice of hanging
anyhow: with a giraffe in the noose Gatza provides an indelible image of the
wrong. Elsewhere the poems depict "befuiddled" heroes trying to obey strange
customs that keep them caged, but, as we learn, "one cat's incarceration is
another cat's contented cradle." Gatza's poetic invention never flags, and
half the fun is seeing how he takes you from one line down to the next--no
two poems are alike, except that here an accent on the quirky and mutable
can always be heard, an onomatopoetic replicating the mind of the poet
meeting the greater minds of the animal kingdom.
An attractive and illuminating book of wisdom.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1DR9ZQG8CWXVP/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
<http://www.amazon.com/review/R1DR9ZQG8CWXVP/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm>
HOUSECAT KUNG FU by GEOFFREY GATZA
RUTH LEPSON Reviews
Housecat Kung Fu by Geoffrey Gatza
(Meritage Press, St. Helena & San Francisco, 2009)
Geoffrey Gatza has moments of Leslie Scalapinoism:
Consumed, I began cleaning; as a portrait of moments flicking out a
drifting life, a lake, an edited reality
of sweet humor:
a hazelnut is a miserable/ nut to quarrel with...a manšs heart devises
his dance/and earth charms away his days
of visual poetry:
There are two sides to every tablecloth
is a line that gets paler as we see the other side of the tablecloth
of personification that moves compelling sounds through emotion:
look at me alive
frozen paths cut
lonely blankets of snow
moments live for days
crazy flights of imagination:
so I took off my nose and unzipped
my skin and folded it neatly by the reflecting
pond so no one would think those awful things
people think about people who go leaving
their skin any which way
his own set of myths, for instance, how the jellyfish was beaten into a
quivering lump
and endless sweetness and sympathy:
maddened moments of trees in terrible pain, Cars rusting on their
underbelly
so read his book HOUSECAT KUNG FU, whether you are an adult or a child,
because once you start you will want to continue.
*****
Ruth Lepson is poet-in-res at New England Conservatory of Music. Her books
are Dreaming in Color, Poetry from Sojourner: A Feminist Anthology (ed.),
Morphology, a collaboration with artist Rusty Crump of his & her pix & her
prose poems, and, forthcoming from blazeVOX.org, I Went Looking for You. She
has been performing with jazz musicians Noah Preminger & Eric Lane in low
road, & the group has a CD forthcoming.
http://galatearesurrection12.blogspot.com/2009/05/housecat-kung-fu-by-geoffr
ey-gatza.html
<http://galatearesurrection12.blogspot.com/2009/05/housecat-kung-fu-by-geoff
rey-gatza.html>
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