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Ungula
The debut book of Garett Strickland. Here, the horror of a bodying with whom the reader-twin invents itself and its movement thru holes in space gouged out by gods, the lived inscription of pages turned mytho-architextu/r/al nonument. The first major study of Ordealism & Liminalogy.
498 pages, Paperback
First published April 10, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 11, 2020
Ungula is an intimate birth. The fluid prose-poetics of bodily assembly. Ritualizing the soft tissue of the DUMB CREATURE as it learns to stand, speak, move. Occupying a cabin in the woods. Approaching life in the forested depths of the wilderness. Somewhere remote and isolated.
Whatever they are, their seduction is reminiscent of the archaic mother. The unknown mass—landscape—luring you into its chamber. The blackness of the ocean whispering for you to submerge yourself. The ungulate subject moves through the abstract cabin as if they are being drawn towards something. I have trouble saying what. If it is the ELD MOM or something less tangible. The sensation of being lost. Emissions intercepted from an unknown station. UNGULA speaks in the manner of something I have not seen with my own eyes, but which I am drawn to observe. DUMB CREATURE, their conception, their prolonged existence in the one-room labyrinth. If I was more familiar with the occult—which I have only ever pretended to be familiar with—then I might point to various symbols, cross-contaminations, shared motifs, references, and whatever else. But I am not, so each of these moments is only a lure to me. It is another means of dragging me in. Pulling me into the observation deck of the corrupted surgery suite. Inside I watch as DUMB CREATURE is eventually returned to their point of orign. I read UNGULA with the hope that whatever spawn it has created will eventually die.
Ungula is encased in fat. Appendices and Annexes. Texts retroactively expanding the base-text. Forming portals between it and other minor occultism. It and the other works of Garett Strickland. As the first major work of ordealism and liminalogy, Ungula articulates an interconnected matrix of unsettling images / the overgrowth of an atemporality. Its tendrils stretching into nature and looping back again.
An essential read.
Whatever they are, their seduction is reminiscent of the archaic mother. The unknown mass—landscape—luring you into its chamber. The blackness of the ocean whispering for you to submerge yourself. The ungulate subject moves through the abstract cabin as if they are being drawn towards something. I have trouble saying what. If it is the ELD MOM or something less tangible. The sensation of being lost. Emissions intercepted from an unknown station. UNGULA speaks in the manner of something I have not seen with my own eyes, but which I am drawn to observe. DUMB CREATURE, their conception, their prolonged existence in the one-room labyrinth. If I was more familiar with the occult—which I have only ever pretended to be familiar with—then I might point to various symbols, cross-contaminations, shared motifs, references, and whatever else. But I am not, so each of these moments is only a lure to me. It is another means of dragging me in. Pulling me into the observation deck of the corrupted surgery suite. Inside I watch as DUMB CREATURE is eventually returned to their point of orign. I read UNGULA with the hope that whatever spawn it has created will eventually die.
Ungula is encased in fat. Appendices and Annexes. Texts retroactively expanding the base-text. Forming portals between it and other minor occultism. It and the other works of Garett Strickland. As the first major work of ordealism and liminalogy, Ungula articulates an interconnected matrix of unsettling images / the overgrowth of an atemporality. Its tendrils stretching into nature and looping back again.
An essential read.
Did Not Finish
April 21, 2026Abandoned on page 329 after the poem “nothing quenches my step” which is the only line on the back of the book and which I really enjoyed - the line, not the poem or the book.
I guess too experimental for me? I really like reading for readings sake but it still needs to be good writing I guess… there were some nice lines that sounded good or had a heft to them. But with some I mean a hand full.
The rest I really didn’t like. I am astonished I got as far as I did but I also gave it two tries, waiting 8 or 10 months or so between them to pick it back up fresh, with an unquenched step but… yeah no. I think I will abandon the experimental inside the castle publisher for the time being.
I guess too experimental for me? I really like reading for readings sake but it still needs to be good writing I guess… there were some nice lines that sounded good or had a heft to them. But with some I mean a hand full.
The rest I really didn’t like. I am astonished I got as far as I did but I also gave it two tries, waiting 8 or 10 months or so between them to pick it back up fresh, with an unquenched step but… yeah no. I think I will abandon the experimental inside the castle publisher for the time being.
January 19, 2024
"How just yesterday I lived my life one day after another like eggs I was eating all in a row
fried fried fried fried fried
abiding in the spirit that was giving me rise
taken to suture for the purposes of mourning all that was to come
seeing thru my hands into the core of the earth whenever I would move to act..."
fried fried fried fried fried
abiding in the spirit that was giving me rise
taken to suture for the purposes of mourning all that was to come
seeing thru my hands into the core of the earth whenever I would move to act..."
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews