Customer Reviews

Kinky

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First off this is one of the funniest books of serious petry ever written. Second, using Barbie to show all the hypocracy and flaws in our culture and society works wonderfully. Third the empathy the poems show for those of us, for whatever reason, don't fit the Barbie and Ken mode is truly touching.

I've read all of Denise Duhamel's collections of poetry. _Kinky_ is the funniest, most focussed, most controlled, least self-absorbed, most accomplished of them all. I've given it to friends and shared it with my family, and we all absolutely love it.

An entire book of poems about Barbie dolls? You bet, and you bet it's good. Duhamel approaches these overly-proportioned pieces of plastic with a mixture of childhood enjoyment and deep cynicism which will wash you away with both the humor and the tragedy you didn't know were there. This book is fantastic, it's poetry that's not just alive, it's brighter than a pink taffeta ball gown.

This book of poems was all these things and more. The messages portrayed in the Barbie- her figure, her dependence on Ken, her inability to move or feel, it is like the woman before the women's rights movement. Denise Duhamel must be a feminist. There was so much depth in her poems, they were definitely not just about Barbie. I loved how she mocks society, for example how Barbie, on her wedding day, wishes she could just pick out a tux and not do all the things the bride has to do... I look forward to meeting Denise Duhamel in my poetry class today!!!!

Perhaps you should hire Duhamel to design the next Barbie? Her poems are funnier than most stand-up comic routines! Each is a twisted little Barbie fantasy--a grown-up playing with the doll. Listen in on Barbie's therapy sessions, which, perhaps, are not all that different from your own. Duhamel deconstructs Barbie with tenderness--no small feat for a book of satire.

The book explores the issues of gender, beauty, religion, and effects of imperialism and corporatization with cutting and savvy humor. A quick and pleasurable read.

The cover of Denise Duhamel's fourth collection of poetry shows a bloated Barbie, surrounded by sweets and balancing precariously on impossibly tiny high-heeled feet. Artist Bob Dahm's cover is admittedly humorous and undeniably cute, although body dysmorphia is only a small issue among the many that Duhamel attacks successfully through the use of persona poems featuring America's favorite beauty icon. This illustration captures Barbie's freakish dimensions and accentuate how cartoonish a regular Barbie doll is without an artist's manipulations. While Kinky is certainly an attention-getting title, sexuality again is just a tiny facet of the breadth of Barbie's issues.

Denise Duhamel takes the reader on a journey through a wild array of Barbies by going into her many issues including love, body image, self worth, sexuality, race, self image, careers, and faith just to name a few. Sections are organized by Barbie's makeup. In Lipstick, Duhamel concentrates on race relations, how we treat minorities, various ethnicities and politics. Powder Blush gets a little into sexuality but is really more about relationships and major life events. The Mascara section covers body issues, reproduction and the importance we place on fashion over so many other more important things. In Eye Shadow, Duhamel takes us soul-searching with Barbie, and gets into her philosophy and faith.

Through the use of a cultural phenomena like Barbie, Duhamel's poetry appeals to a broad range of readers, literary and less so. Barbie is iconic and she has been marketed as everything from the all-American cheerleader to a veterinarian, a flight attendant and a pilot, and she's had editions in several ethnicities and as characters from several films. Mattel's Barbie has always been sunshine and rainbows, while Duhamel's Barbies walk a decidedly darker avenue. Duhamel's Barbies are apocalyptic and bisexual, are Beatniks and hippies, and go to therapy.

Make no mistake, this is a fine collection of poetry that shows originality and insight. Her work is clearly publishable-quality. While Duhamel uses Barbie as her vehicle, she avoids cliches and is a master of condensed language. Stephen Dobyns would say that she uses, "the best words in the best order," but Duhamel has done so much more than that. Her poetry is meant to be heard aloud as she has paid attention to rhythm, pausing, imagery and metaphor. Through a fresh take on an American icon, Duhamel's imagination comes into play as she tackles Barbie's various potential real-life issues. In the grand conversation that poetry strives to achieve, she has upped the ante of what contemporary poetry can be - witty, sarcastic, and painfully true.

The language of Kinky shows Duhamel's mastery of tone and diction, but also how she pays attention to language and how the poem sounds aloud. In "Manifest Destiny" from the Lipstick section:

In the Philippines
women workers in fashion doll factories
are given cash incentives
for sterilization. Body parts roll
too fast on conveyor belts...
In dreams
these women package Toys "R" Us uteruses...

Duhamel lays and layers her lines like thoughts gathering before a realization, allowing the reader to come to the same conclusion on their own without being spoon-fed the concept she's trying to get across. Alliteration and consonance play out in Philippines fashion factories and Toys "R" Us uteruses. Her deft use of rhythm and space encourage the reader to think for themselves.

In "Bisexual Barbie" from the Powder Blush section, Duhamel's intuition asks the question that's on everyone's mind. She imagines that Barbie is real, living and breathing, and applies real world statistics to an icon that defies the social norms.

One of ten Barbies is left-handed,
another ten percent are lesbian.
But it's hard to keep track of the bisexual ones -
their orientation often secret, or if overt,
still undetectable. Barbies often dress in front of one another
and staticians think nothing of it.
Two Barbies often share a sleeping bag or double bed
because there are twice as many Barbies as Kens.

It is true that in Barbie's universe the social norms are all off. The first thing most young girls will do when they get their hands on a Barbie is take off the doll's clothes. We are fed the story that Barbie is all American, the perfect woman, beautiful, straight, fashionable, and career-minded but loves her man. Duhamel pushes the reader to question the underbelly of Barbie's lifestyle in a way that is both witty and uses common sense.

Denise Duhamel continues the conversation of poetry with "Beatnik Barbie" in the Mascara section where Beat poetry left off. Historically the Beats were the first major innovators to the form of poetry, with William S. Burroughs and Alan Ginsberg leading the way. Here we discover that Barbie is physically unable to get down with the Beats, try as she might.

But she hadn't the veins for heroin,
the lungs for pot, the rhythm for jazz.
She preferred glamor to Ginsberg,
fashion to Ferlinghetti,
winsome beauty to William Burroughs.

As contemporary and forward-thinking as Barbie tries to be, she's won over by the superficial. Even were Barbie physically capable of going barefoot on her "tip-toed feet", or to snap her "Venetian blind" fingers, she doesn't have the intellect or motivation to really get deep and meaningful with the rest of the Beats. Even though "Beatnik Barbie" explores the past, the theme of apathy and superficiality is right on track with what's transpiring across America today.

The publishability of Duhamel's Kinky comes full circle with "Barbie's Final Trip to Therapy" in the Eye Shadow section. Duhamel has now exhausted all of the directions Barbie could go. Barbie has reached out to philosophy, attended a twelve-step program, taken various stabs at religion and faith, and has done much of the tough work involved in therapy. On her way to the afterlife, she takes a final trip to therapy and the language is succinct and rich.

She's naked
as the first day she was made in the factory,
as naked as Eve, as Lady Godiva, as naked as Jane
when she took off her animal skins
to escape the jungle and her bad marriage with Tarzan.
Barbie is as vulnerable as Cinderella
in that split second between her dissolving rags
and the instant gown her Fairy God Mother bestowed her.

At this point Duhamel has stripped Barbie down, both physically and emotionally. The reader now has complete sympathy with Barbie by now and aches with the same vulnerability. Duhamel has taken the reader on a journey with Barbie, and what started off a humorous and clever has now become a bridge to revelations that strike at the very nature of what it is to be a woman not only in America, but in the world. She has demonstrated with great flourish that she wields words with the dexterity of a seamstress and the strength of a lumberjack. Of Kinky, Renee Thomas called it, "A masterful tongue-in-cheek collection of poetry that rejects double standards and oppression as it pertains to women in a quirky original style using the iconographic Barbie doll." Denise Duhamel deserves every accolade.

Witty, surprising, and focused, Kinky is a book of poetry that I purchased a long time ago and reread almost every other week. I love Duhamel's sense of humor -- it is biting. The theme of the book could not be more fitting. Scrutinizing Barbie, her inadequacies, her flaws, her perceptions of reality, is a fascinating foreground set against a background of political, social, and emotional turmoil. Highly recommended to all readers!

I have read every book she's written, yet I continue to be amazed by her skill, warmth, humor, brilliance and playfulness. If you had ten stars, I'd want to give her even more. She's is the rare gifted writer who makes me feel as if she's a dear friend.

THIS
THAN
BETTER
ANY
GET
IT DOESN'T

I think this is my favorite poetry book. Just don't ask me to say why. Glad the other reviewers agree, tho...

And second best? Hmmm - maybe Tony Connor's selected/collected (titled Things Unsaid). But Kenward Elmslie (Album), Paul Violi, Larry Fagin? (And that's not counting all them dead English guys - what's your pleasure?) (Sorry if this is incoherent; gotta go read a BOOK!!)

PS for completists, DD has another Barbie poem in the 1996 anthology American poets say goodbye to the 20th century (a nice overview of who was flourishing at the time). I'm not sure she would adapt nicely to the selected/collected format; read her as published!