The Contortions

by Nicole Mauro

chapbook, published in kollektiv, 2007.

Genres: Poetry

Unbound

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Nicole Mauro has published poems and criticism in numerous journals, including How2, Jacket, and Western Humanities Review. She is the author of six chapbooks, one full-length collection, The Contortions (Dusie Books, 2009), and is the co-editor of an interdisciplinary book about sidewalks titled Intersection: Sidewalks and Public Space (with Marci Nelligan, ChainArts, 2008). Her second full-length poetry collection, Tax-Dollar Super-Sonnet Featuring Sarah Palin as Poet, is due out from Black Radish Books in 2011.

Nicole lives in the San Francisco bay area with her husband Patrick, and daughters Nina and Faye. She teaches rhetoric and language at the University of San Francisco.

Reviews

[C.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

HOW BRILLIANT IS THIS, "Jackdaws Love My Big Sphinx of Quartz" taps against the words of Rimbaud with exquisite punctual time, time and again in Pangrams respectively: Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, English American, Esperanto, French, Greek (Mother of Pangram), Hebrew, Japanese, Latvian, Polish, Serbian, Slovakian, Spanish, Swedish, and finally one of Unknown Origin. Here's a sample that'll make you want to read the entirety:


Slovakian Pangram

O hole of
my anatomy---either a flock of happy
woodpeckers by the mouth
of the river Vah is teaching a silent
horse to nibble on
my cavitary, or I've eaten my heart
out, ah
ha. Elision of memory---why
won't my lips
move? Because Ich. Because Du.
Once we kissed
until we collapsed
like pulsars
and t'were
poofed. Hereafter, Lippizanners. I hear through the hoof-
beats I'm impenetrable to
rhapsody, to
your doppelgangers
hunting
mine in the fecund and loving them by
the dragoon
"under the red perfumes of
a polar sun" reflecting forevermore
the Danube.


The 10-part title poem, "The Contortions," each section flanks a Rorschach blot test (yes, that's right!), and they're compelling to listen to, meaning read aloud! I MUST share #3:


Head up the ass---I contorted,
withdrew. To to, intellectually, I
suppose,
it
drove in to
inform the smaller-grammed
organs
what it
knew---that they are viscous,
caught
between
solid and fluid. They just sat
there, they still sit,
all the while
my gourd
halved like a rectum, plotted
the calves
it would shit. What a bestial
day, I
ought
to be reminded of you. O
nostalgia, O
former splendor
of everything wan and
exhumed. The sun, askance. How
do we
get the fuck
out of this
room.


Nicole Mauro is A HELL OF A POET! When I win the lottery, this is one of the books I'm buying everyone I know whether they think they love poetry or not. They will!

CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

What the psychic saw in the Rorschach: “snollyglostered,” “lollygag,” “hoosegow,” “schnockered,” “poon.” A total verbal world, soap opera- and sphinx-inclusive, where in chorus “all my nuclei go dur.”

[Marci]

If you are a fan of poetry that changes the way you think about language, that upends your expectations and recharges your enthusiasm for form, psychology, art and pornography, get your hands on this book (or really any of Mauro's work).