The Hatch

by Joe Fletcher

“I will do such things,” King Lear shouts before the storm, “What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be / The terrors of the earth.”

Drawing upon Edmund Burke’s definition of the sublime—the odd beauty associated with fear and self-preservation; our astonished delight in what destroys, what overpowers and compels us toward darkness—these strange poems mine the sinister fault lines between weird fiction, expressionism, gothic horror, and notions of the absurd, cracking the mundane shell of our given metaphysical order. In the traditions of Nerval, Trakl, Schulz, Tadić, Poe, and contemporaries Aase Berg and Jeff Vandermeer, the wonderful disassociation brought to bear on the reader lies in the conjuring of unprecedented worlds, their myths and logics, their visions and transformations—worlds that resist interpretation almost successfully, and reveal to us the uncanny and nightmarish.

Genres: Poetry, Horror

114 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2018

About the author

Joe Fletcher is the author of two chapbooks of poetry: Already It Is Dusk (Brooklyn Arts Press) and Sleigh Ride (Factory Hollow Press). Other work can be found in jubilat, Octopus, Slope, Puerto Del Sol, Gulf Coast, Painted Bride Quarterly, and online at joefletcherpoetry.com. He teaches literature and writing at the University of North Carolina and in the North Carolina prison system, and he is the Managing Editor of the William Blake Archive.

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of poetry/Prose/Flash Fiction is way before it's time, to fully appreciate this work you need to be living in a dystopian future where the survivors are few, buildings are in ruin and people are a little bit mad. If you live in that future then great, start reading this book, if that future hasn't arrived for you yet then still read this book to get you ready.

I am a fan of Rusticles by Rebecca Gransden and this book's meandering randomness fits in perfectly. One of my favourites in this collection is a poem containing multiple parts, it is about a poet looking through a hole and each time seeing something odd. Each story in Rusticles is a bit like that.

There is the odd bit of humour that will give you a chuckle:

"Here comes the president,
so close to the screen you spy the elastic of his wig"

The book is not afraid to go a bit dark now and then either, there are some lines that are so random they are almost beautiful in their description:

"In a casino bathroom in Malta
I vomited two red dice
into a woman's hand."

The highlight for me though was the following wonderful bit of prose:

"A Woman in the Philippines receives news of the death of American entertainer Michael Jackson moments before she is to see a film. In the dimness of the theatre she unleashes sobs into her hands throughout the romantic comedy. Upon exiting, she notices several other people with reddened eyes."

This is the first thing I have read by Joe Fletcher and it certainly isn't going to be the last.

Blog review is here. https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2018...

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange and beautiful book. I don't recommend bingeing this brief collection before bed--or maybe I do.

[✨Bean's Books✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

“"I will do such things,” King Lear shouts before the storm, “What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be / The terrors of the earth.” Drawing upon Edmund Burke’s definition of the sublime—the odd beauty associated with fear and self-preservation; our astonished delight in what destroys, what overpowers and compels us toward darkness—these strange poems mine the sinister fault lines between weird fiction, expressionism, gothic horror, and notions of the absurd, cracking the mundane shell of our given metaphysical order. In the traditions of Nerval, Trakl, Schulz, Tadic, Poe, and contemporaries Aase Berg and Jeff Vandermeer, the wonderful disassociation brought to bear on the reader lies in the conjuring of unprecedented worlds, their myths and logics, their visions and transformations—worlds that resist interpretation almost successfully, and reveal to us the uncanny and nightmarish."
A compilation of poetry that writes on the darker side of humanity. Beautifully written and compiled. Very enjoyable to read.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Your caretaker's son murdered you, which was only a rearrangement / of matter."

[Joe Pan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-crafted solid fright of a book. Strange & brilliant.

[Zainab · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was pretty good.

[Keeley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this one for review from NetGalley.

My rating is closer to a 3.5 than a 4 but Goodreads doesn't allow for 1/2 stars.

I don't claim to have any understanding of poetry at all and I feel like that really impacted my ability to enjoy this collection. There were so many poems that I know had a deeper meaning than what I was getting, but I had no idea what I was reading. That being said I found the writing really beautiful and did really enjoy some of the ones from section two. I think The Wake and The Hatch are probably my favorites of this collection.

A dark and weird collection of poetry I would recommend this one for poetry lovers and horror fans.

[Ligia Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I breezed through this horror anthology quickly and blissfully. Each poem withstands on its own and gives off their fair share of creeps. This collection is one of those that you truly have to focus on to get the full effect that they try to evoke.

Thank you Netgalley and Brooklyn Art Press for the chance to read this horrifying collection.

[Errol Styles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weird book, great stuff, you have to enjoy the strange to get it I think but I loved it.

[Jerrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a copy of these poems from #netgalley in exchange for my review. If you enjoy writing that’s described as “a fever dream,” then these poems are for you. The language builds arresting and often disturbing or grotesque images. As well as that was done, however, I found the poems somewhat hollow.

[Zuky the BookBum · Rating 2 out of 5]

I requested this because I haven't read poetry in a long time and I thought the fact that this was mixed with horror would be a good reintroduction to reading poetry. However, I couldn't really get onboard with this. But I'll start with a positive as say what wonderfully creepy cover art this collection has!

A lot of the imagery in this collection is rather grotesque, and some of the subjects of the poems are dark, so I understand the horror genre label. However, the poems didn't frighten me, give me the creeps or give me any other kind of horror emotion.

I think I know the reason for this, and that's because I find it really, really difficult to lose myself in poetry. I guess like with books, lots of flowery language distracts me from the story, so maybe that's where I'm going wrong with poetry, because it's often quite flowery. I do enjoy some poetry but it has to be straightforward and tell an easy to follow story. This collection... wasn't. It was flowery and filled with language that went about telling a story in confusing ways. At some points, I didn't have a clue what I was reading or what supposed to be feeling.

Example: "Mathematics are a ladder in the wild," you said, drunk. "Climb it to reach the real." - Um, I beg your pardon? What are you saying?

There were a couple of pieces in here that I did like. One being Northwest Passage which read more like a story, but for the most part, this collection was lost on me. So unfortunately, this was a 2 star read. I didn't find it that interesting and I'm glad it was only a short read.

However, this may be great for anyone who loves and connects with poetry. I can't exactly say if this is well imagined, well written poetry, because I honestly don't know - I found a lot of the metaphors and descriptions very confusing, as I've said before - but it might be worth giving a shot if you enjoy the more flowery writing.

Thanks to Netgalley and Brooklyn Arts Press for giving me the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review. Sorry I didn't like it!

[Lisa - *OwlBeSatReading*]

DNF @ 24% therefore, I won't be giving this any star rating.

I like poetry, and I like horror. This wasn't at all what I was expecting, it seemed like random nonsensical ramblings by someone who's swallowed a dictionary.

I'm not sure how important a characters breath stench is when it comes to creative writing, but Joe Fletcher has a thing about it. Yuk.

I didn't understand what I was reading, I tried very hard to connect with what the author was trying to portray, but I simply didn't get it.

[Joshua Gage · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Hatch is not pure speculative poetry, to be sure. There are no robots, no elves, no zombies, etc. The hallmarks of speculative poetry are not here. However, if 70% of the SFPA consider surrealism to be speculative poetry, and over half of the membership considers metaphors dealing with speculative tropes to be speculative poetry, Fletcher is clearly in our cool kids club. While SpecPo purists may not appreciate The Hatch, readers with wider definitions who desire poetry with rich, allusive metaphors and surreal imagery will thoroughly enjoy this collection.

Full Review Here: http://www.sfpoetry.com/sl/reviews/18...

[desiree Bergez · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I requested this book because I wanted to try something different. I've read poetry before but this one I felt like some of the poems I just couldn't get into. I had a couple of favorite ones that I really enjoyed. Isaiah, The Colorado, Northwest Passage, and The Wake. As for the horror aspect, I didn't really find one that gave me the creeps or frightened me. Overall if your someone who can get lost in poetry this would be a good book for you.

[Michaela (Journey into Books) · Rating 1 out of 5]

*I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review*

I’m a massive fan of Edgar Allen Poe so when this poetry collection was compared to his I knew i just had to pick it up however, I didn’t enjoy this poetry collection as much as I was hoping to. I enjoyed some of the poems such as Kindergarten, The Wake, The Hatch and Palmdale Area but most of them I didn’t really understand. 1.5 stars.

[Katrina Southern · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't originally intend to read this, but it being Halloween month I was intrigued by the idea of a darker poetry. I wanted to be spooked, but wasn't in the right mood for a full-blown story. I hoped that 'The Hatch' would provide me with something a bit different, and in that respect I wasn't disappointed. I'd certainly never read anything like this before!

This collection was very dark. It's filled to the brim of some grotesque imagery, and unsettling depictions of life with a slight post-apocalyptic feel. It was never quite clear if this was a vision of the future or a different way of looking at the present. There's a touch of black humour in there too which I appreciated, and despite this not being my usual cup of tea, I did appreciate how vivid the descriptions were (often to the point of nausea).

But the problem I had was that I didn't really FEEL anything while reading this. I wasn't inspired, I wasn't totally horrified, I wasn't creeped out. I found myself making my way through this collection with a vague disinterest, and though there were certain points that I found parts I liked, I couldn't name them now because nothing here for me was particularly memorable. I think this will appeal to those that are looking for the bizarre, the surreal and like to read 'weird' but that sort of thing doesn't overly do it for me.

[Lamar Dischant · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is full of imaginative ingenuity, subversive wordplay, and genuine insight and feeling. One poem begins, "In a parked car outside a faucet warehouse / I ate a spider believing it would change me." Another: "In the canyon the light smelled old." The kind of surprise Fletcher traffics in is rare, precious, and a necessary ingredient for a poem that thrills. This book is both thrilling and chilling as it cliff dives into quarries of darkness and terror. Still, Fletcher's intelligence and wit make the darkness navigable. The poems feel old and new, aware of the tradition while aimed at the future.

[Andrew McAuliffe-Shave · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully strange and eclectic read. For an introvert like myself this collection is like gold dust! The book cover captures the overall mood of the book brilliantly and everything within this book is genius. A book i will go back to again and again!

[violeta · Rating 3 out of 5]

there is so much disturbing imagery in this book but that got me into it. some poems were super repetitive and i’m not crazy about most but like the hatch and the fly were really good

[Sean Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really well written collection of enigmatic poems that don’t shy away from describing an unsettling atmosphere

[Mira]

I said it before and I'm saying it again - poetry is a complex genre to review. But I saw this and it looked interesting - a collection of poems with horror undertone? Yes, please. However, upon receiving an ARC, I realized it wasn't for me - at all. Poetry is very subjective in it's nature but it rarely ever happens to me that I don't get it AT ALL. Reading The Hatch was like reading empty words - just random combinations of flowery phrases glued together to generate a decent sized chunk of text and label it "poetry." I do believe that each and every one of them has a distinct meaning to the author himself, but I, as a reader, got noting out of reading the collection.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection is an ambitious mixture of prose and poetry, and the prose definitely outshines the poetry. I found the flash fiction title piece to be stunning, but sadly most of the poetry seemed to just be lists of images the author thought might seem uncanny but fell short.

Aside from the odd prose poem not much was done with the form and I was left a little underwhelmed, I don’t really think this collection felt like poetry to me, partly because poetic technique was lacking though that’s just my personal preference.

I don’t really think marketing this collection as horror poetry helped, it didn’t really deliver on the horror front aside from in the few scattered prose poems and flash fictions

I got this book free from netgalley for an honest review

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting set of poems. A story in each poem. Did not seem like a set of poetry at first but really nice.

[Sarah]

DNF - This isn't horrible or anything, what I read so far was pretty decent, but it just can't keep my attention.

[Bonisa]

Reviewed for CLMP Firecracker Awards - so no public rating or comments!