Little Red: new poetry

by Kerry Gilbert

100 pages, Paperback

Published February 15, 2019

Reviews

[Kristilyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark. Disturbing. And I loved it.

[sophie esther · Rating 3 out of 5]

With this contemporary collection of poetry, Gilbert remembers the dark truths behind the fairytales we pretend have happy endings. She exposes the fraudulence behind the open dishonesty we use to paint those pretty cultural and societal lies to help us sleep at night.

Gilbert wakes us up with nightmares in her poetry that grabs us by the chins and turns our heads towards acknowledging the everyday tragedies we censor not with happy endings, but with dismissive erasure.

"Her body too is facedown in the ground
like we are planting children now, and
their thin limbs vine across sand and soil

an offering to the gods -- a sacrifice

we sing soft nursery rhymes while we
place water on their raised foreheads
pray this time to sow a better crop"

[Aaronlisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Going into this collection of poetry, I thought it would be poems based on Little Red Riding Home. And while the bulk of the poems do explore themes of that fairy tale in a sense - mostly modern takes - it also had poems about the Syrian refugee crisis and parenthood. Overall this collection didn’t just focus on the inherent danger women and girls are in from predatory human wolves but also the idea of childhood and the things that can corrupt the innocence of children.

Overall I liked it but I felt like something was missing when I finished this book.

[B. Mantler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kerry Gilbert's poems draw the reader in and presents imagery to make the reader think.