The Blood Poetry

by Leland Pitts-Gonzalez

Is Epstein a despicable man?He's certainly trying desperately at something. When his wife disappears he's frantic to talk to his daughter. But what can he tell her? There must be a reason and he's all but sure about the gruesome answer. Can he protect Sylvia from the truth, from her terrible lineage and, ultimately, from himself?Off-beat and sordid, The Blood Poetry is a twisted, yet honest look at our desire to connect with others and the ways in which we are often stymied by our own efforts to get closer. Epstein is a curious mix of monster and romantic struggling to maintain a shred of dignity in his dingy, beat down world.

Genres: Horror, Fiction

219 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 6, 2012

About the author

SAVAGE ANESTHESIA - Short Stories (Carrion Blue 555), August 2017.

"You know that homeless guy on the bus who sidles up to you and begins to mumble about aliens? SAVAGE ANESTHESIA is what you might get if he tied you up and made you listen to him long enough that he began to make sense. Obscene and surreal, these are mindscapes to get lost in."
Brian Evenson, A Collapse of Horses

"A work of stark and strange realism about a wholly unreal place: our very own world, which has rarely been reported on with such piercing focus. An original, paranoid, intense book of stories."
—Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea

“Leland Pitts-Gonzalez does not transport the reader to another headspace so much as he transforms the reader. After coming out of SAVAGE ANESTHESIA, looking at words, thoughts, or people in the same light is an impossibility. To say that this is addictively irreverent is an understatement.”
—John Edward Lawson, Bibliophobia

Reviews

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

She has become ravenous, the way hydrochloric acid depletes your face.

hmmm, experimental horror novels...i'm kind of a giant shrug on this review. there are authors who do this style, and do it well, but i have never really been into them, so i feel a little out of my depth. people who are into matthew stokoe or burroughs will probably like this book, and the back cover calls it A Bataille sitcom full of meat and mommies. which could be accurate or could just be a pithy soundbite. (patrick bateman's name is dropped in the same blurb, and i believe this character is the exact opposite of patrick bateman, so i don't know how much trust to put in this comparison to bataille. i've only read story of the eye, so.)

but the book is tricky. it is enamored with offbeat wordplay (see above), and it employs stream-of-consciousness and stilted non sequitur-conversations and unreliable narrators to do all the storytelling. so, after all that layering, i'm not sure how much of the action is "real" and how much are delusions, and how much is metaphor.

"What am i doing here?" she asks.
"Solace, perhaps? Kinship? I don't know much about that."
"I've got Armageddon in my grips." She holds the dinosaur up to her chest. Her eyes are tired, pretty much super nova to the extreme.
"His name is my being," I say.
"Did Mom call?"
"No, honey." I'm fond of Sylvia's eyebrows because they're a bit mangled. There's something rabbit about her. For a moment, we just lock eyes and there is equilibrium in the world. You see, Sylvia, it happened like this: my life. There it is all for you to see and my heart races. There's urgency in clarity, sort of like scolding a retarded child with a stick simply for being alive. Here for you to see, my daughter, is your father. I am. "Honey," is all i can manage. "For the life of me, I can't think of the right thing to say."
She forgives me. I can see this in her complete disregard of my confession. She rolls over, grabs a cig, and lights it. I don't bother to tell her to put it out.
"Can I have one?" I ask.
She gives me one.
I smoke. Incandescence is the beauty of cancer. We share this like we share nothing else. We lie in bed like that, smoking it off, enjoying the release.

so, to me, as someone who is relatively neutral to poetry, this is just a lot of sound and fury. i'm not sure what "super nova" (sic) eyes would be, or what clarity has to do with child-beating, or how cancer is incandescent.

but i also don't understand what i am the walrus is about either, and, to be honest, i don't even like the beatles, which i know leaves me in the minority, so this could resonate with people who are really into more surreal literature. it isn't about what words mean, but how they flow and how they appear typed alongside each other...nah, who am i kidding? i hate that argument, which i have heard before. words mean what they mean. sounding pretty means nothing. there are so many words. find one that work to say what you mean.you can do the surreal and the evocative and still make sense, like beckett.

the father-and-daughter in bed together, "smoking it off, enjoying the release" is no twss accident. there are plenty of incestuous themes running through here. also cannibalism, vampirism, conjoined twins in the role of mystic-sage(s), erotic violence, a fascination with serial killers, autism, both spiritual and literal rebirth, and lots of menstrual blood.

it is strange to me to feel so indifferent to a book that is obviously trying to push all the shock buttons, but there it is. i think someone with a stronger bent towards the surreal grotesque would dig this, but for me, it was taking too many liberties with language, and ultimately undermining its own story with clever stylization.

come to my blog!

[Allizabeth Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review:

Obscenely unique to say the least! When I read the blurb, I was oddly intrigued, yet confused by the seemingly evasive premise. I was not quite sure what a "grotesque" was, or why the mentioned characters appeared to be circling the drain of madness, but I knew that I was interested in figuring it out. Upon receiving the eBook, I was surprised by the story's abrupt start, Epstein and Sylvia were the first characters I met, and their relationship, as well as their inner dialogues, were quite putrescent - dark and boorish, with an abundance of corkscrewed humor. I am not used to reading books that play back-and-forth between streams of consciousness, so I had to get used to Leland Pitts-Gonzalez's interesting writing style, however, after the first couple of sections I actually started to enjoy the gritty and off-kilter nature of the plot-line and characters, particularly Astor and Fester's role in the unearthly bedlam. Epstein is a very strange and complex character, I spent most of my time attempting to figure out his personality and queer behaviors - cringing at the overly descriptive prose that tended to be offensive, but not entirely off-putting. The back-story was just as demented, proving to be a challenge - which may have been the intention - nevertheless, it added another layer of convoluted imagery to the already tangled series of events. I will admit, I did have a bit of trouble comprehending a few sections, whether it was the wording or the grammar, I do not know, but I felt that it was easy to get lost in text itself; I even had to get out the dictionary a few times. That said, the crude, off-the-wall, and untamed content still presented itself as well-constructed and highly original. I do recommend this book to adult readers, although - be warned - the strong language and subject matter is definitely rated "R". I do consider the perverse style of The Blood Poetry an acquired taste, but it was very interesting reading experience indeed.

Rating: On the Run (4/5)

*** I bought this eBook on Amazon.com in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

[Beaird Glover · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very imaginative and good runs at narcissism, cruelty, madness, craziness, bizarro-world weirdness. A Christian theme runs through it, seeking forgiveness, the last hope of the pathetic. Like the low-budget David Lynch movies where the scene is sooo slow and suspenseful that you can't stand it and then the most trivial thing happens, and you feel disappointed and less likely to feel suspense next time. There are some great lines. This one sums sums up the book for me: "I fart and there is no smell."

[Forest Blackwelder · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disturbing imagery and a non-sympathetic main character. IF Norman Bates, Bram Stroker, and Stephen King attempted to write something disjointed and poetic. I kept reading thinking it had to get better. After the last page, I feel that my eyes and soul need a good scrub with an SOS pad.

[Nicole Wolverton]

This wasn't for me.

[Cat Voleur · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't sure if I wanted to give this one a three or a four and was swayed to give it a four because of how unique I thought it was. I've never seen an approach to vampire mythology quite like this and I don't think I'll be able to forget it any time soon.

Parts of it really resonated and stuck with me. It captured a sort of restlessness that I believe goes hand in hand with any undead narrative.

The downside is that there were stretches that were really slow. For a book of this length it's not a very quick read, which I felt clashed some with a style that forces the reader to take things at face value.

If it had all been written like its most depraved or most sympathetic sections, it would have been 5-Stars without question. As is, there are ups and downs. That being said, it's one of the freshest takes I've come across when it comes to vampire stories, and I was pleasantly surprised.

[Horror DNA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Take a second to think about what literary horror means to you. Done? Okay, now let's be honest for a second. The concept you just pondered makes most people think of absolute boredom, incredibly thick tomes, and slow-paced storytelling. If you can imagine a yawn-inducing Southern Gothic tale about a romantic ghost plagued by pages upon pages of descriptions and written by Dostoyevsky after smoking a dozen opium pipes, you're approaching what most people think of when literary horror is mentioned. Thankfully, now there is an antidote to this way of thinking: reading Leland Pitts-Gonzalez's The Blood Poetry.

You can read Gabino's full review at Horror DNA by clicking here.

[Csimplot Simplot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book!!!