Instructions for Killing the Jackal reinvigorates the poetic tradition of myth-making using a combination of Southern folklore, urban legend, and Greek mythology.
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Format:Paperback
Erica Wright new book of poems, INSTRUCTIONS FOR KILLING THE JACKAL from Black Lawrence Press captures attention immediately; the title begs investigation and the cover art by Alexis Anne MacKenzie draws it all out for us. But there are few overtures that would be completely appropriate to describe the poetry inside this volume. Erica Wright seems to penetrate the dark side of people, relationships, history - the many aspects that raise like palpable ghosts out of the earth defying explanation. Yet for all the forces of nature and human behavior she visits here she seems to have the strength of a Wonder Woman, so secure is her handling of the material at hand. While peering into mythology and legend she uncovers pathways for confronting the hoary beasts and bring them under control. Some examples will encourage the reader to enter the world of Erica Wright:
Instructions for Killing the Jackal
File the teeth first - no, shoot
the tranq. Then teeth, nails, testes.
Feed yourself Valium if faint of heart.
(Jackals may be faint-of-heart.)
This is necessary to kill the jackal.
but keep the man.
Embroider pillows, learn 'The Inferno',
learn Italian, then 'The Inferno' in Italian,
and for his return, recite passages
he'll not understand, though he's been there
and returned to you more man, less jackal.
Say, 'I'll take you furless and toothless,
take your gums and the nicks form the razor,
let you bleed on me if you return.
Purple-eyed and calloused,
rub your calluses against mine;
we could sand each other
until we got to the good parts.'
Wright's vulnerable humanity peeks out in certain poems, such as in the following:
New Illness
I knew a woman once who rooked
some doctors for lollipop painkillers,
the cancer-patient kind,
though I couldn't see anything wrong
with her except her goodwill shrinking
as the suckers shrank, and I knew
the devil was getting his due,
asked him, 'Devil, is this all you've got?'
He said kindly - I swear
it sounded kindly - 'it's enough.'
Not only does Erica Wright possess a mind fertile with imagination that seems to see into interstices few of us can, but she also has a gift of language so extraordinarily descriptive and fresh that each of her poems simply dazzles. Enter this book and be aware Wright may be addicting. Grady Harp, December 11
Instructions for Killing the Jackal
File the teeth first - no, shoot
the tranq. Then teeth, nails, testes.
Feed yourself Valium if faint of heart.
(Jackals may be faint-of-heart.)
This is necessary to kill the jackal.
but keep the man.
Embroider pillows, learn 'The Inferno',
learn Italian, then 'The Inferno' in Italian,
and for his return, recite passages
he'll not understand, though he's been there
and returned to you more man, less jackal.
Say, 'I'll take you furless and toothless,
take your gums and the nicks form the razor,
let you bleed on me if you return.
Purple-eyed and calloused,
rub your calluses against mine;
we could sand each other
until we got to the good parts.'
Wright's vulnerable humanity peeks out in certain poems, such as in the following:
New Illness
I knew a woman once who rooked
some doctors for lollipop painkillers,
the cancer-patient kind,
though I couldn't see anything wrong
with her except her goodwill shrinking
as the suckers shrank, and I knew
the devil was getting his due,
asked him, 'Devil, is this all you've got?'
He said kindly - I swear
it sounded kindly - 'it's enough.'
Not only does Erica Wright possess a mind fertile with imagination that seems to see into interstices few of us can, but she also has a gift of language so extraordinarily descriptive and fresh that each of her poems simply dazzles. Enter this book and be aware Wright may be addicting. Grady Harp, December 11
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