Croak

by Jenny Sampirisi

Croak is a frog-and-girl opera in three parts, played out like a YouTube mashup of mid-century cartoons set to a contemporary pop song. It parades, mutilates, and reacquaints Kermit the Frog with Girl 00010111, Michigan J with Aristophanes, and biblical plagues with caged canaries in a vaudevillian play of time, culture, gender, and narrative. Combining vivisection and classical literature, empirical observation and philosophical speculation, Jenny Sampririsi's grotesque characters splash and sparkle before moving toward their inevitable narrative end.

'As invigorating and idiosyncratic a collection as this reviewer has encountered in some time. A must-read.' – Seth Abramson, Huffington Post

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

First published November 21, 2011

Reviews

[yuna✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

what a strange book… using the format of a play. about frogs and girls and girls and frogs… and frogirls lol

[Olivia Nahmias · Rating 1 out of 5]

*1 star*
WTF is this book?! Is it a screenplay? Is it poetry? Is it about frogs or girls? There’s no structure or grammar. Whattttt is this and whyyyy did so many people give it 5 stars?

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Croak is a playful cross-genre work that blurs the boundaries between girl and frog, between theatre and poetry. This book works through sound and staging to enact an exploration of environmental pollution, and the ways in which pollution distorts and mutates frogs, girls, and language. Croak leaps between humour and darkness, politics and poetry, science and drama.

[amanda]

I am extremely excited for this book to be published!

[Michael Bacon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Meh. Weird and hard to read, but still not that fun/interesting/exciting. Usually I expect weird and hard to read to result in something more entertaining.