Yours, Creature

by Jessica Cuello

Yours Creature is composed of epistolary poems in the voice of Mary Shelley. Often written as missives to her famous literary mother, Wollstonecraft, the poems address months, years, and her own monstrous creation as they contend with exile, transience, and desire. These poems ask us to imagine the physical elements of Shelley's existence in language that is both luminous and visceral. This is not a book that simply recreates a past, but one that transcends time as it threads together the loss and violence that history has asked women to suppress. The poems recognize the unspoken pairing of scarcity and creation; they explore how the monstrous is born out of rejection. Yours, Creature responds to a literary and historical narrative, but the poems exist as lyric, singing of the pleasure of creation and its transformative power.

Genres: Poetry

110 pages, Paperback

Published May 15, 2023

About the author

Jessica Cuello is the author of LIAR, selected by Dorianne Laux for the 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize and Yours, Creature (JackLeg Press). Cuello is also the author of Pricking (Tiger Bark Press), Hunt (The Word Works), and three chapbooks: My Father’s Bargain, By Fire, and Curie. She has been a recipient of The Washington Prize, The CNY Book Award, The New Ohio Review Poetry Prize, The New Letters Poetry Prize, and a Saltonstall Writing Fellowship.

Reviews

[wyrm · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is exhilarating to read and understand such a love letter to the life and legacy of Mary Shelley. Gordon’s biography is one of my favorite books and I love to see it represented and drawn from by this author in this form. I will be doting on and devouring these words for years to come. Thank you for allowing me to read this early copy for review!
(review originally posted to edelweiss)

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always marvel at poetry collections that are biographic: what to put in, what to leave out; what details of a person's life contribute most to the poems' voice; questions of sequencing and prioritizing; how to create emotional and psychological depth, and especially as in Yours, Creature how to transmit heartbreak and hardship in a few lines. Cuello has excelled at all of these challenges. The voice ringing through these epistolary poems is fullbodied and truly compelling. Mary Shelley lives through Cuello's words from start to finish.

[Carla]

Written in the persona of Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein, these epistolary poems gripped me from the first page. Historical sources (e.g., Charlotte Gordon’s biography of Mary’s mother, Mary Wollencraft, the letters of Mary Shelley) inform the poems— but the spirit of the book is as Gothic and frightening as Frankenstein.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the first time in my life, I couldn't put down a book of poems.

Cuello's writing exudes confidence, which is well-earned, and she proves it page after page. From subtle, refined formatting and wordplay to arrangement in general, 'Yours, Creature' reads as meticulously and intentionally composed on every level.

‘Yours, Creature’ masters the art of having multiple well-written poems capable of standing on their own individually (a feat in itself) come together to articulately create a biography of Mary Shelley's life. Not only is this goal of creating a cohesive book of poems about an iconic writer achieved, but it also completely outperforms expectations, making for an engrossing read.

It’s official, I’m a fan of Jessica Cuello.

[Lesley Wheeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving and profoundly original approach to the absences in Mary Shelley's life story.

[emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

i like the blending of research & persona, i like aspects of the epistolary format but feel it gets a bit redundant which i'm sure is amplified by reading this in so few sittings, & i like the way the sounds of the poems work with the images. brutal & thoughtful. percy bysshe shelley was the worst guy ever. i think my only complaint re:repetitive form would be eliminated by simply reading this slower

[Flor Espinoza Sanchez ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the textbooks for my Poetry class. I enjoyed it, it was very simple.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of epistolary poems in the voice of Mary Shelley.

from Dear Mother [I watch G's fingers]: "I am the apple of his eye / I am the reader of his work / His frown can collapse my spine // His grief for you becomes a pillar / my attention winds onto"

from Dear Rejection 1815: "In threes they came: the mother, the father, / the holy lover. One by one they cut me loose: / the first went underground without me. // The second couldn't bear to touch me: / I was monstrous, toddling from bed / with open mouth, a devil girl with spindly // neck. The third was a boy who touched / my thigh to prove that I was nectar-made, / my girlhood gone."

from Dear Creature [Sister against half]: "Sister against half sister / Sister against stepsister / The wedge was P. // All three of us jostled / to be in his line of sight / but he had only two eyes // and they saw us as one— / monofocused on a single girl"

[Sunni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous and haunting. I’ve been intrigued by Mary Shelley for years, and the spare but dense epistolary poems in this collection offer the world of Shelley: the relationships, losses, travels, travails, secrets and even the weather that framed so much of her life. Each poem is a piqued confession, a quiet cup of heartache.