The Ultimate perVERSEities

by Kurt Newton

Poetry collection published by Naked Snake Press. Cover and interior illustrations by Chris Friend.

This edition collects PerVERSEities (2004) and PerVERSEities II (2004), also published by Naked Snake Press, and includes new material exclusive to this edition.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Kurt Newton sold his first story, "The Promise of the Sea," in 1993. Since then he's had over 400 poems and 250 short stories published in a wide variety of magazines, anthologies and webzines in the U.S., Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, Germany and Poland. To date, he has received sixteen honorable mentions from the editors of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and has been seven times nominated for the Rhysling Award for his poetry.

Among his favorite authors are Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Flannery O'Conner, Harlan Ellison, J.G. Ballard, Joyce Carol Oates, John Shirley, Lucius Shepard, Jonathan Carroll, Christopher Conlon and Paul Tremblay.

He lives in the northeast corner of Connecticut.

Reviews

[Kristine Muslim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kurt Newton's The Ultimate perVERSEities (Naked Snake Press, 2010) is a collection of short poems intended to tax our inhibitions and biases over which themes are supposed to be left unwritten and unsaid. The book lives up to its title. Ranging from toilet humor to overt body horror, the poems require a strong stomach. Tabloid eye-candy titles like "circus trainwreck massacre" and "slaughterhouse girls" (who were naturally "born the daughters of butcher men") hint on Newton's black twisted humor. There's a piece entitled "mad cow patty" which showcases Newton's playful and original reference to "cactus burgers" -- the thought of which is ridiculously perverse.

From the evocative and unsettling "The Birdcatcher"

You don’t know why the creature has
let you live while killing all the rest,
but it has made a bed of bones and
matted feathers. Now and then it
drops wet meat into your open mouth.

From my favorite piece, "Letterhead"

The letters she sends are special, bound with
skin, a chip embedded in the folds, the latest
in bio-sensory pleasure-grams. Each word a
titillating prompt.

Another notable piece is the highly disturbing "the balloon clown."

Torture porn in "to the dogs"

ignore the smell
it is just our skins
crumpled loose about our ankles

Blasphemy, atrocity, and bestiality abound. Populated with freaks and brooding outcasts, with the undead and the soon-to-be dead, The Ultimate perVERSEities gives so much in terms of imaginatively rehashing genre elements. Donna Taylor Burgess of Naked Snake Press is to be commended for taking a leap in publishing this tome.