Customer Reviews

Becoming the Villainess

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Jeannine Hall Gailey's first book of poetry does not disappoint. The poems are witty and moving, smart and surprising. With titles such as "Playing Softball with Persephone," "Amazon Women on the Moon," and "While Reading Glamour in a Dark Age," you cannot help but want to turn the page to see what comes next.

Of "Female Comic Book Superheroes," Gailey writes that they "are always fighting evil in a thong,/pulsing techno soundtrack in the background/as their tiny ankles thwack/against the bulk of male thugs."

Gailey's poems play with myth, reality, pop-culture, and everything else in between but with a feminist's touch and a poet's hand. Intellectual and accessible, this is wonderful debut collection that I highly recommend.

Jeannine Hall Gailey's book is fresh and edgy. Her collection empowers women by splicing narratives from mythology and fairy tales with modern subjects like video games and anime, giving voice to silenced women and retelling their stories with a feminist perspective. Following in the poetic footsteps of many greats, including Louise Gl?ck and Margaret Atwood, Gailey's book is sure to grasp your attention early and hold you till the end, surprising you at each step with the strength of her craft and the honesty of her own experiences told through the framework of persona poetry.

Becoming the Villainess is the debut collection of free-verse poetry by journalist Jeannine Hall Gailey. Addressing the archtypes of myth, from modern pop culture to Ovid to Grimm's fairy tales, Gailey weaves words expressing the hearts of shunned, reviled, justly and unjustly treated villainesses and female victims of fable. A dramatic, moving collection; each poem has a gripping personal story to tell. "Daphne, Older": Peel back my skin: / reveal hard fibers, bite marks, // scars from wind and rain. / Life is pain - I won't tell you // any different. Just that sometimes, / avoiding what you fear // isn't the answer. See? All these years / my branches sang with birds // and my leaves drank sunlight- / I haven't missed much. // My heartwood hardens slowly / over time - first, to the music, then, to the light.

This is a gem of a book. The poems are accessible and imaginative, the poetics are thoughtful and expertly crafted, and the subject matter steers clear of the archaic and esoteric which belabors so much of contemporary poetry.

Gailey navigates popular culture, contemporary feminism, fairy tales, superheroes and the world of electronica with terrific finesse and a sharp sense of humor. Her voice rings clear as a bell in this collection and I can't wait to see what she's got next.

She could be a Billy Collins for the younger women in contemporary America who have already traced the roots of their power back to Suffrage and see that feminism isn't just about bra-burning and symbology, but about using what our mothers gave us: voices, brains, and mettle.

I'm inspired.

Gailey's words exploded off the page into my head. I would often feel like the hesitant super-hero she was writing about. As a guy that likes poetry, but dislikes poems about nature and beautiful aristocratic 19th century women, this collection was very refreshing.

Becoming the Villainess is hands-down one of my favorite books of persona poems! Gailey takes the familiar tropes of myth & fairy tale and transforms them into an experience of the strange, the even-stranger, the wicked & unexpected. Like Sexton's Transformations, these poems recall the stories of childhood, all the while adding depth and even a touch of humor to temper the heart-breaking moments created in this fabulous collection.

Jeannine Hall Gailey's Becoming the Villainess is a unique volume of poetry housing poems stemming in Greek mythology to comic book characters.

Gailey's images are crisp and immediate with recurring uses of pomegranates, wolves, and other items. Alice in Wonderland, Wonder Woman, Persephone, and many more make appearances in Becoming the Villainess, which is separated into five parts. At the end of the book, Gailey includes brief descriptions of the myths inspiring the poems enclosed within its pages.

Each section in Becoming the Villainess examines the evolution of female characters from innocent girls to darker, vengeful women, but these characters are deeper than stereotypical comic book characters, mothers, and goddesses. While some of these poems have a lighter, tongue-in-cheek quality to them, some of them drive home the deep dark horrors found in many legends, myths, and real-life events. One particularly jarring poem in the collection is "Remembering Philomel," in which a professor is asking for grittier details of the narrator's sexual assault.

Becoming the Villainess by Jeannine Hall Gailey is a wonderfully insightful collection that looks beneath the surface of myths and sexy comic book characters to find their motivation, their desires, and spunk.

It's been awhile since I really read through a volume of poetry, seeing it as a completed body of work, rather than turning and mulling over an occasional poem. I ordered this little book based, in part, on the stellar reviews given here, and was sadly disappointed.

There were two pieces in this collection that, despite study and evaluation, I could not fathom. Lacking the power to understand galls, but can also inspire; I was moved to look up the three references and two stories I was unfamiliar with, but in spite of researching the myths and history used as a foundation, I found that each poem lacked clarity and focus, despite a tone that should have made the message quite clear. Poems are not apples, though; a spoilt pair should not ruin the bunch.

Looking over the remainder, I found that the majority of other poems were well-turned phrases, neatly crafted collections of words that served as clever little rants. I now understand what my college professors meant when they dismissed such offerings out of hand in Craft classes and demanded something thoughtful, moving, and insightful as well as impassioned. The few purely clever pieces dripping with personal experience were haunting in the story they conveyed, but lacked any real wisdom gained by experience.

I will say that the best poem of the bunch is one that I will hold on to for my sheaf of great pieces. "Daphne, Older" was worth the time and energy spent tripping over her less than stellar shield-sisters. A second piece of that quality would have made the book worth keeping.