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Deadly, Delicate
These poems circumnavigate the world of historical piracy, presented at a slant where the men are dangerous and the women are lethal. The violence and the sweetness, the freedom and the acceptance of death are all given equal footing. Never straying from the brutality of a lawless life on the seas, Deadly, Delicate welcomes you to the depths...
42 pages, Paperback
Published December 5, 2016
6 people want to read
About the author
Kate Garrett
50 books61 followersKate is a writer, mama, and witch who plays tabor & bodhran, is obsessed with history & folklore, reads tarot, makes things, keeps fish, does whatever the cat says, and haunts 800 year old churches.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 16, 2017
Deadly, Delicate by Kate Garrett; Review by Stella Bahin
Any poem or poetry collection worth its salt pays for the rereading of it, and having previously read Kate Garrett’s Density of Salt, I knew in advance that Deadly, Delicate was going to be well worth my considered attention. I was right. I also knew, correctly, that it would be another ‘salty’ collection. But I was wrong in imagining Deadly, Delicate, with its subject of pirates, to be less serious than Density of Salt. I should’ve known otherwise.
This briny-sodden plank-short collection contains both archetypical piratical imagery and previously published poems among the previously not. I suppose it’s the familiarity of both these elements – despite the partially forbidding title of this collection – that lent me a sense of safety during my initial, somewhat skimming, sampling, read-through. There are many other comfortably familiar elements. The very first poem, in colloquial, comprehensive prose-form, is called Picaroon; the same name as Garrett’s regular web journal launched last year, the web journal which Garrett thoughtfully publishes with a forewarning to the reader regarding any potentially sensitive issues touched upon therein; and which poem, Picaroon, now, ends with a phrase recalled by me as a high-spirited mock-pirate chant from childhood; ‘it’s a pirate’s life for me.’
The tone, it seems, is of playful, adventurous, pretence. The earlier ‘you’ that ‘they call a villain’ which the poem Picaroon begins with is the ‘you’ of the given, authorial, signed-up pirate voice, but may also be assumed as ‘you’ the reader; me; us; one of the ‘rogues and rapscallions’ to whom the entire collection is cheekily dedicated. We can suppose that the reading of this pamphlet of poetry isn’t seriously thought by its author to be any roguish type of act on the reader’s behalf and that this personalising potential of ‘you’, is simply about involving the reader in the childlike, childhood-referencing, fun of it.
Encountering a ‘cutlass’ in the second poem of the total of fifteen is – of course – not the same as having to fight with, or defend oneself from any such weapon, and the hinted also-sexual connotations of ‘cutlass’ further the sense that to read this collection is to participate in a cleverly-constructed, pleasing, and imaginative game: ‘You have one spare in every port/but every one of them/has only you’ … Could a waiting woman in a port also be a – temporarily – ‘cut lass’, as in cut from contact as in the forthcoming phrase in Astrolabe ‘communication cut’: communication-cut? The language is playful too; teasingly, bawdily sometimes, punning.
I pleasurably take the next poem, Shore Leave, as a giddying dip in suddenly rough seas; understand the poem following that as an imaginative representation of sexual encounters ashore; I notice key images overlapping from one poem to the next, with changing perspectives, then feel myself carried back aboard with Astrolabe, journeying along enjoyably with the sense of a single narrative, albeit involving multiple characters. I do not pause, therefore, in my reading until last line of Give no quarter, touched, delicately, as suggested that I might be touched – I contemplate now – by the collection’s title taken from an earlier poem, Crack Jenny’s Teacup. But, before long, I’m sailing on through the collection again with an Anne, a Jack, a Mary, then a Samson/Rapunzel figure. Siren is the next poem to stop me, hauntingly, briefly, in my tracks with its plot-turn, before I head on once more via the bloody yet romantic penultimate poem, to the final poem which I, perhaps fittingly, guzzle down. I’m then pleased to find that beyond it there is information about the terms used and the men, and – predominantly – women, encountered, too.
A taste for more appetized, I soon return for a second reading somewhat dreamily. Thinking I kind of know what’s going on it by now. This time my reading slaps me like a bucket of cold seawater over a snoozing drunkard.
“Who’s there?!” I blink, afterwards, as it were. “Who are these characters?” I wonder, stupidly, imaginatively catching a glimpse of the cast on deck: seamen, male and female; a woman towards the wench (I fancy, layers of long skirts and under-skirts); a lesbian; a trans-dresser; an imposter; a man beyond compassion or redemption; all committed to new, anti-societal, codes, the condemned – all with something to say. Waiting for me to wake up, and what? Fight? Cry? Hurt? Bleed? Think. In all those ways: with effort, emotion, feeling…
I think. Why is the childhood-invoking ‘it’s a pirate’s life for me’ line of Picaroon followed by Cutlass – is ‘cut lass’ sinister, more bloodily, physically, painful than I had at first taken it? Childish fun inappropriately and damagingly cleaved by adult realities? And in Shore Leave, where is the horizon, where am I, the reader, in it, now? I am disorientated, seeking a landmark; seeing stars. And what about the almost oxymoronic opposites of the ‘deadly’ and the ‘delicate’ in Crack Jenny’s Teacup; there at the fulcrum of an awakening from a sleep-state to a conscious-state, at a liminal moment, at a turning-point between rule-breaking togetherness and imminent, rule-breaking departure? I consider such quasi-opposites as a theme throughout the whole collection with its interplay of learned sensitiveness and vulnerability, and learned perilousness and grit; of flinching, self-defensive, tenderness and exhilarating, swashbuckling, adventure. It doesn’t seem so safe and familiar anymore.
The last line of Give no quarter, ‘one clement act and all would be undone.’ which gave me contemplative pause initially has gained in poignancy – it now defines the impossible fragility of the feelings under which these outlined bold, epic, quests are embarked and lived upon: Deadly, delicate… My reading has become disrupted. I sway in my thoughts from idea to idea, character to character, unsure of my readerly sea-legs. Siren, which is one of my favourite poems of the collection, calls me to think again, again; to reconsider what I think I am reading… It begs a ‘rogue’, ‘rapscallion’, understanding of the evident text: ‘listen.’
When I return for a third reading, it is with trepidation. I have heard a multi-voiced cry within it of which the siren-type cry is one. I still don’t, personally, believe that it’s an unsafe read in terms of the issues it alludes to or addresses, although that may not be true for all readers. It is gentle in its handling of even, for example, the horrible mortal wounds in What God wants, inflicted by one distanced from and unstained by their murderous act – as the earlier cutlass is unstained by what it does and has done, ‘clean enough’. But the thematic cry is not gentle, or social, or law-abiding, or ‘clean’, or safe, at all. It is a cry from a solitary piratical heart, expressed in ambiguities through a wide and wild ensemble, that can only be heard with accustomed piratical ears. What is unsafe about Garrett’s Deadly, Delicate is that it is – after all, game on – a pirate trip: ‘a pirate’s life for me.’
Any poem or poetry collection worth its salt pays for the rereading of it, and having previously read Kate Garrett’s Density of Salt, I knew in advance that Deadly, Delicate was going to be well worth my considered attention. I was right. I also knew, correctly, that it would be another ‘salty’ collection. But I was wrong in imagining Deadly, Delicate, with its subject of pirates, to be less serious than Density of Salt. I should’ve known otherwise.
This briny-sodden plank-short collection contains both archetypical piratical imagery and previously published poems among the previously not. I suppose it’s the familiarity of both these elements – despite the partially forbidding title of this collection – that lent me a sense of safety during my initial, somewhat skimming, sampling, read-through. There are many other comfortably familiar elements. The very first poem, in colloquial, comprehensive prose-form, is called Picaroon; the same name as Garrett’s regular web journal launched last year, the web journal which Garrett thoughtfully publishes with a forewarning to the reader regarding any potentially sensitive issues touched upon therein; and which poem, Picaroon, now, ends with a phrase recalled by me as a high-spirited mock-pirate chant from childhood; ‘it’s a pirate’s life for me.’
The tone, it seems, is of playful, adventurous, pretence. The earlier ‘you’ that ‘they call a villain’ which the poem Picaroon begins with is the ‘you’ of the given, authorial, signed-up pirate voice, but may also be assumed as ‘you’ the reader; me; us; one of the ‘rogues and rapscallions’ to whom the entire collection is cheekily dedicated. We can suppose that the reading of this pamphlet of poetry isn’t seriously thought by its author to be any roguish type of act on the reader’s behalf and that this personalising potential of ‘you’, is simply about involving the reader in the childlike, childhood-referencing, fun of it.
Encountering a ‘cutlass’ in the second poem of the total of fifteen is – of course – not the same as having to fight with, or defend oneself from any such weapon, and the hinted also-sexual connotations of ‘cutlass’ further the sense that to read this collection is to participate in a cleverly-constructed, pleasing, and imaginative game: ‘You have one spare in every port/but every one of them/has only you’ … Could a waiting woman in a port also be a – temporarily – ‘cut lass’, as in cut from contact as in the forthcoming phrase in Astrolabe ‘communication cut’: communication-cut? The language is playful too; teasingly, bawdily sometimes, punning.
I pleasurably take the next poem, Shore Leave, as a giddying dip in suddenly rough seas; understand the poem following that as an imaginative representation of sexual encounters ashore; I notice key images overlapping from one poem to the next, with changing perspectives, then feel myself carried back aboard with Astrolabe, journeying along enjoyably with the sense of a single narrative, albeit involving multiple characters. I do not pause, therefore, in my reading until last line of Give no quarter, touched, delicately, as suggested that I might be touched – I contemplate now – by the collection’s title taken from an earlier poem, Crack Jenny’s Teacup. But, before long, I’m sailing on through the collection again with an Anne, a Jack, a Mary, then a Samson/Rapunzel figure. Siren is the next poem to stop me, hauntingly, briefly, in my tracks with its plot-turn, before I head on once more via the bloody yet romantic penultimate poem, to the final poem which I, perhaps fittingly, guzzle down. I’m then pleased to find that beyond it there is information about the terms used and the men, and – predominantly – women, encountered, too.
A taste for more appetized, I soon return for a second reading somewhat dreamily. Thinking I kind of know what’s going on it by now. This time my reading slaps me like a bucket of cold seawater over a snoozing drunkard.
“Who’s there?!” I blink, afterwards, as it were. “Who are these characters?” I wonder, stupidly, imaginatively catching a glimpse of the cast on deck: seamen, male and female; a woman towards the wench (I fancy, layers of long skirts and under-skirts); a lesbian; a trans-dresser; an imposter; a man beyond compassion or redemption; all committed to new, anti-societal, codes, the condemned – all with something to say. Waiting for me to wake up, and what? Fight? Cry? Hurt? Bleed? Think. In all those ways: with effort, emotion, feeling…
I think. Why is the childhood-invoking ‘it’s a pirate’s life for me’ line of Picaroon followed by Cutlass – is ‘cut lass’ sinister, more bloodily, physically, painful than I had at first taken it? Childish fun inappropriately and damagingly cleaved by adult realities? And in Shore Leave, where is the horizon, where am I, the reader, in it, now? I am disorientated, seeking a landmark; seeing stars. And what about the almost oxymoronic opposites of the ‘deadly’ and the ‘delicate’ in Crack Jenny’s Teacup; there at the fulcrum of an awakening from a sleep-state to a conscious-state, at a liminal moment, at a turning-point between rule-breaking togetherness and imminent, rule-breaking departure? I consider such quasi-opposites as a theme throughout the whole collection with its interplay of learned sensitiveness and vulnerability, and learned perilousness and grit; of flinching, self-defensive, tenderness and exhilarating, swashbuckling, adventure. It doesn’t seem so safe and familiar anymore.
The last line of Give no quarter, ‘one clement act and all would be undone.’ which gave me contemplative pause initially has gained in poignancy – it now defines the impossible fragility of the feelings under which these outlined bold, epic, quests are embarked and lived upon: Deadly, delicate… My reading has become disrupted. I sway in my thoughts from idea to idea, character to character, unsure of my readerly sea-legs. Siren, which is one of my favourite poems of the collection, calls me to think again, again; to reconsider what I think I am reading… It begs a ‘rogue’, ‘rapscallion’, understanding of the evident text: ‘listen.’
When I return for a third reading, it is with trepidation. I have heard a multi-voiced cry within it of which the siren-type cry is one. I still don’t, personally, believe that it’s an unsafe read in terms of the issues it alludes to or addresses, although that may not be true for all readers. It is gentle in its handling of even, for example, the horrible mortal wounds in What God wants, inflicted by one distanced from and unstained by their murderous act – as the earlier cutlass is unstained by what it does and has done, ‘clean enough’. But the thematic cry is not gentle, or social, or law-abiding, or ‘clean’, or safe, at all. It is a cry from a solitary piratical heart, expressed in ambiguities through a wide and wild ensemble, that can only be heard with accustomed piratical ears. What is unsafe about Garrett’s Deadly, Delicate is that it is – after all, game on – a pirate trip: ‘a pirate’s life for me.’
September 2, 2017
I love this book of poems. In one slim volume, it brings alive the world of historical pirates, effortlessly using historical research into real pirates such as Anne Bonny and Calico Jack to create characters who live and breathe. The pirates are tough, tender, and often surprising. The language is sparing, yet sensuous, exploring the interior lives of infamous female pirates - how several "plead the belly" as they were pregnant, to avoid being hung. Historical information about the pirates is in the appendix at the back of the book, but don't flip to the back first. Read the poems, and let the language wash over you like the waves, then once you know who the poems are about, start again, with a deeper understanding. The poems in 'Deadly, Delicate' show a wonderful love of language and a passion for all things pirate - best read with a tot of dark, sugared rum.
December 25, 2016
Don't let this volume's diminutive size fool you. Like the subjects of many of the poems within, the book's apparent daintiness is deceptive. This is poetry that rings with swordplay and reeks of gunpowder and blood. You will also find tenderness between lovers, betrayal of shipmates, and the pull of the sea, of freedom. This tiny book holds an ocean.
August 31, 2024
“Deadly, Delicate” by Kate Garrett is a treasure trove of captivating poems. The collection is an engaging adventure with a cohesive style. Each poem immersed me deeper into a pirate’s life. From the melodic pacing to the bold imagery, this book is a great fit for poetry lovers, pirate fanatics and any reader that wants to slip away from the real world to ride along in a historical pirate ship.
The book itself is a cute, small size. The cover is a picture of a pirate ship at sea, which is a gorgeous work of art.
I read the entire book in one sitting and plan on re-reading it again.
Kate Garrett delivers a beautifully crafted story with interesting characters, vivid scenery and sonorous diction.
This a must-read for anyone who loves narrative poems, buccaneer adventures and escaping everyday doldrums.
If I had to pick one thing to critique, I would have liked to have seen the poems structures vary more from page to page. I think maybe creating a map somewhere with the words would have added another intriguing visual to the book. But I also love the book as it is, so this is merely an acute observation. What matters most is the story and it’s a beautifully written.
This is such a unique concept for a poetry book and I absolutely love it.
The book itself is a cute, small size. The cover is a picture of a pirate ship at sea, which is a gorgeous work of art.
I read the entire book in one sitting and plan on re-reading it again.
Kate Garrett delivers a beautifully crafted story with interesting characters, vivid scenery and sonorous diction.
This a must-read for anyone who loves narrative poems, buccaneer adventures and escaping everyday doldrums.
If I had to pick one thing to critique, I would have liked to have seen the poems structures vary more from page to page. I think maybe creating a map somewhere with the words would have added another intriguing visual to the book. But I also love the book as it is, so this is merely an acute observation. What matters most is the story and it’s a beautifully written.
This is such a unique concept for a poetry book and I absolutely love it.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews