Customer Reviews

Kissing Dead Girls

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Daphne Gottlieb made her name in spoken word by writing and performing edgy, non-conventional work. She doesn't shine her poetic flashlight into the dark corners of the human experience, as much as she snaps the flashlight off and sits within the darkness herself until she can communicate the experience honestly.

Her latest book of poetry, "Kissing Dead Girls," would seem, at first glance, a bit gimmicky. After all, for a poet whose work is already highly associated with darker themes and sexuality, writing a book where she has romantic liaisons with deceased historical figures might seem like a no brainer.

But Gottlieb takes what could have been a very easy book for her to write, and instead produces what might be her most challenging and complex collection to date. Her poems about "kissing dead girls" show these historical women as real women, interacting within the Gottlieb as they would a real lover. For instance, in the piece about Marilyn Monroe (my personal favorite), Monroe is shown in such a wonderful, sincere and multi-faceted way: bubbly yet manic, beautiful yet insecure, haunting yet haunted, and even alive yet dead.

The title series is just one themed series which runs through the book, which is so dense with wonderful material, it takes several sittings to reach the end -- and that's a compliment! I have to admit, I was shocked by some of the pieces, both in terms of her chosen subject matter and her raw approach. But doesn't poetry need more moments like that -- wake-up calls to the fact that not everything in poetry should be safe, or presented in such way that makes your feel comfortably distant. Sometimes we need a Gottlieb to shake us up a bit, show us the dark so that we can appreciate the light.