Radish King

by Rebecca Loudon

Loudon's second book, following the successful Tarantella, takes us to dangerous and beautiful places, balancing survival and art, extinction and cutting humor. The book is sized as a large postcard and will take your breath away both visually and intellectually.

Genres: Poetry

111 pages, Perfect Paperback

First published October 1, 2006

Reviews

[Roz Ito · Rating 5 out of 5]

What are these poems like? Well, true to the inner title page that precedes them, these poems burn. They incinerate, they commit an arson of the mind & soul. They blaze with a life intensity that resembles a luminous, lucid madhouse or a horse finding its way back into the wild or the heaving, sleeping body of a lover who dreams of giant shapes in the night and who smells dangerous. You might be dangerous to yourself while reading these poems, you might wander straight into the visceral zone between violence & beauty, fire & water, passion & release, and you might not want to come back but you will because you have to, with bits of the Radish King's world stuck to your hair like mystical residue.

Plus, this has got to be the best front cover EVER for a poetry collection.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Navigate is a plunge, then Radish King is a high-wire act. Again, no safety net's there to for the reader's plummet; nothing here is what he or she will expect. Just look at the shape of the book--immediately you're out of the realm of the expected. Every line in every poem is a tightrope. Rosin your hands and slippers; get out your parasol or balancing stick; walk the wire with these amazing poems.

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

My advice to anyone considering reading this book, is to read it when you are sleepy and almost dreaming. These are the type of poems you will find, ones that slither intuitively off the page. Ones that are bright erotic, exotic and sometimes dangerous pearls. Most of the poems in this book really got under my skin.

[Steven Sparks · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems will smoke you.