Wastoid

by Mathias Svalina

In Wastoid’s dystopian landscape of desire, lovers love trampolines, lamp-makers, the sound of cars driving in the rain, anonymous tips that send innocent men to the electric chair, toil, and silence. By turns tender & nonsensical, foolish & profound, Mathias Svalina explores love’s endless variety & illogical boundaries. Merging renaissance sonnet traditions with the serial explorations of Cortazar & Calvino, Wastoid cycles through the all-too familiar terrain of love & pain & ecstatic failure, searching for some new way to never be able to learn anything new.

Genres: Poetry

154 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2014

Reviews

[Will Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A baby fell in love with Picasso… An author fell in love with a photograph of himself on the twenty-third page of a college brochure… Death and love are just-friends”—so go the unlikely, unrelenting romances in Mathias Svalina’s Wastoid. By taking things like the already-odd objects that Shakespeare compares his lovers too and torquing them to the absurd—taking note from Berrigan and Berryman’s dismantling of the form—Mathias finds his own sonnets in plain-spoken prose poems, each called “Wastoid” (borrowed from an obscure heavy metal band name). Making exhaustive use of the volta—his turns in phrase shift less from tone as they do from one reality, or body to the next, like in the end of the opening poem where the speaker is swallowed in customary style: “preying mantis body, preying mantis eyes, preying mantis mandibles biting through my preying mantis skin, eating my preying mantis eyes, understanding in the manner of a joystick.” This “joystick” is the click-through to a mechanical realm and Othered body. The mantis can now control, embody, and become one with the other mantis. Here and elsewhere, we can’t ever be sure whether Wastoid is our speaker or lover—Svalina seems interested in rejoining bodies in the spirit of Aristophanes’ speech from Plato’s Symposium about the conjoined origin of man. With the surrealist ease of Frank O’ Hara, there are times when Svalina can sound overly flip and his reliance on short sentences to create a staccato between thoughts can feel like a bit of a crutch: “I am like the sun I am so dumb. The stars burn like spattered blood. Everything is on fire. The remote control is in my hand but the TV won’t turn off.” The overall conceit here is harder to distinguish than in Svalina’s previous Destruction Myth, but his humor bobs us through a first read: “my lover is six white dudes at an Arbys” and after a second, we notice a densely connected web of Grimm-like childhood stories where Wastoid is a blob devouring Home Depots, Costcos, dreams, deaths, swarms, and “the word SWARM”—casting a long shadow with its “enormous name” over any semblance of an individual, breathing self except for in fleeting, ghostly pronouncements like: “In darkness I am the cover of a magazine.”

[Donald Armfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems are just something everyone needs to read. If the poets love disappoints you turn to the next page and I'm sure you'll laugh.

[Jason Kron · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the weirdest books I've ever read, even by abstract poetry standards. I don't think any of these "love" poems stick to a narrative from beginning-to-end. It's gloriously nauseating.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems create a new love alchemy. Hearing the water under cars makes me feel so small. I listen for what these poems have to give, long after reading, while my room is lit by stars.

"My lover is a 911 call. At night the outlets leak electricity & I lick at it. I want everything emergency, the frantic phrasing, the rapid breath uncalmable by an operator's calm."

If you want your heart broken magically, see Mathias read.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dog eared so many pages, the book nearly doubled in thickness! Loved it. Then learned it was "inspired" by Shakespeare's 144 sonnets. Not sure why but this knowledge sort of shattered my rosy-tainted glasses of love into more of an infatuation.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

SPOILER ALERT (I checked the box so it's all good): These poems are great poems.

[Biscuits · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably too thick a chunk but over and over the thumping heart does shake. Blessed to have this in my library.

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

*I quit reading this book about 20 pages in.* It is on my attempt to read again later list.