Disturbing Muses [Paperback]

Mike Allen (Author), Theodora Goss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2, 2005

'I have said, I think, that these poems are interpretations of what the poet sees on the canvas. I add that they are imaginary biographies, as true as anything that actually happened: they are biographies written the other way around, from the evidence of the art.'-from the Introduction by Theodora Goss

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Visions from the darkest galleries of the artistic soul.

In this cycle of eleven poems, Rhysling Award-winning poet Mike Allen takes a dark fantastic look at such 19th and 20th century masters as Chagall, Georgio de Chirico, Escher, Goya, Paul Klee, Joan Miro, Georgia O'Keeffe, Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Toulouse-Latrec and Yves Tanguy. The poems can be taken as surreal, secret histories of life, death and art, or as metaphors for the destructive power of creativity. The book includes an introduction by World Fantasy Award nominee Theodora Goss and an afterward by the author citing the paintings that inspired the poems.

From the Back Cover

"I have said, I think, that these poems are interpretations of what the poet sees on the canvas. I add that they are imaginary biographies, as true as anything that actually happened: they are biographies written the other way around, from the evidence of the art. Pablo Picasso's relationship with women, for instance, as when

he left her a twisted, flattened shell
curled like wet canvas on his padded chair
mouth soundlessly screaming
from the same side of her face
that both eyes now started from.

Isn't that, don't you think it is, the way it (actually, metaphorically, what's the difference) happened?" -- from the Introduction by World Fantasy Award nominee Theodora Goss

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Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Wildside Press (September 2, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809556049
• ISBN-13: 978-0809556045
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 8 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,259,066 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good stuff, mostly., June 7, 2006

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Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Disturbing Muses (Paperback)

Mike Allen, Disturbing Muses (Prime, 2005)

There's one thing that can certainly be said for Mike Allen: the man has serious amounts of raw talent. It may not always be fully realized in these poems, but it's always recognizable.

Allen's writing has the pseudo-baroque twist to it found in the stuff that's been coming out from the mythpunk crowd recently, but Allen separates himself with his ties to ekphrasis; whereas the mythpunks are steeped in ancient times, Allen's focus on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seems positively mundane. He also likes to stick close to his subjects. I have yet to decide whether this is a strength or a weakness, but I'm leaning towards the former.

What really gets me confuse in this book, time and again, is the rhyme scheme. The language and diction point towards the poetry being formal, but if Allen is using a rhyme scheme here at all, it's either hopelessly byzantine or inconsistent. And once again I find myself confused. If it's hopelessly byzantine, all Allen needs to do to propel himself into the ranks of the very, very good is to streamline things a bit. If it's inconsistent, however, he's breaking one of the unbreakable rules of good poetry ("either it rhymes or it doesn't; poems that rhyme inconsistency are the sign of a lazy poet."), and should get slammed for it. Most of the time it's just impossible to tell, but with some sections, repeated reading has made it more clear there's at least some sort of rhyme scheme. Again, I'm inclined to give Allen the benefit of the doubt, but not so liberally as last time.

As for the writing itself, it's quite good:

Poor sleepless boy, doomed to fail school,
sent by his vexed parents to live seaside
for his health (to no avail) but the dreams,
the longing for order, symmetry,

spilled through his hands to crystallize
in press and ink.
("Escher's Bed")

See what I mean? Good, solid meat-and-potatoes stuff instead of the ethereal flitting about one might expect given the press. Oddly, Allen does wander off into the vague a time or two (especially towards the end of his Picasso piece, which reads like the summary section of a high school research paper in places), but not enough to bring the entire book down.

An interesting collection, worth looking into; Allen has the potential to become a household name, with a bit of spit and polish, and you might as well be able to say you knew him when. ***