Customer Reviews

Strange Wisdoms of the Dead

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While most poetry evokes the stale drudgery of a high school English class, there are some new poets out there churning out work that's as fresh as an ocean breeze.

Take Mike Allen's "Strange Wisdoms of The Dead" for example. This slim paperback, a collection of Allen's work over the past 10 years, is filled with beautiful and haunting poems about ghosts and aliens, secrets and horrors.

Allen, whose poem "The Strip Search" won the 2006 Rhysling Award, speculative poetry's highest honor, is a writer to watch in the future. He effortlessly weaves elements of fantasy and science fiction with moments of everyday life, making his verses at once dreamlike and recognizable.

"The Strip Search," is a good example of this. Inspired by Allen's frustration with post- 9/11 security at his day job, a courts reporter in Virginia, the poem evokes a metal detector at the gates of Hell.

But instead of weapons, the device detects hope. Although the main character insists he's abandoned all his hope, the Gate still pings. A "slithering guard" subjects him to a horrible search:

"Its crusted hide was a Venus landscape up close.

It brushed that cold black wand all over my skin,

put it in places I don't want to talk about.

C'mere, it hissed,

it seems you're still holding out hope."

Like many of Allen's poems, "The Strip Search" has elements of humor too, leaving the reader with a gasp and a smile.

While there are a few longer pieces in the book, including four quirky short stories, most of the works in "Strange Wisdoms of The Dead" can be devoured in the time it takes to down a frozen margarita, and produce the same pleasantly disorienting buzz.

This is one book that can be savored in short bites all summer long.

It would be a perfect starter tome for anyone who's afraid to try poetry, or wants to spark a young person's interest in verse with something less boring than all the nature and suicide-themed poems assigned in literature classes.