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Fablesque
Poetry. A hybrid-genre carnivalesque of trauma and rebirth, Fablesque harnesses the power of old tales to dispel the disenchantments of women and animals in the #MeToo era.
- GenresPoetry
69 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2020
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June 21, 2025
Dissertation side-quest and maybe my favorite thing I’ve read all year 🥹
The collection opens with a set of poems inspired by fables, Grimm fairy tales, and medieval bestiaries, then shifts into a section predominantly occupied by a series of “Interior” poems, which describe various architectural features (cracks, a staircase, a window) as if they were Craigslist ads. Each poem ends with an endnote — denoted each time by the phrase, “a note about availability” — that turns backward on itself in a way that feels Shakespearean-couplet-esque. The final section is a set of formally and metrically playful sonnets, and is punctuated by “Astral Sonnets [1–4]”, a collage poem (as per Hong’s notes) that ends mid-clause. The whole collection is haunted by forms of individual and collective trauma, and yet a lightness and an air of fairytale whimsy persist, probably best exemplified in “HK Rules the Planet,” whose speaker is Hello Kitty. Loved this & excited to read Age of Glass :')
The collection opens with a set of poems inspired by fables, Grimm fairy tales, and medieval bestiaries, then shifts into a section predominantly occupied by a series of “Interior” poems, which describe various architectural features (cracks, a staircase, a window) as if they were Craigslist ads. Each poem ends with an endnote — denoted each time by the phrase, “a note about availability” — that turns backward on itself in a way that feels Shakespearean-couplet-esque. The final section is a set of formally and metrically playful sonnets, and is punctuated by “Astral Sonnets [1–4]”, a collage poem (as per Hong’s notes) that ends mid-clause. The whole collection is haunted by forms of individual and collective trauma, and yet a lightness and an air of fairytale whimsy persist, probably best exemplified in “HK Rules the Planet,” whose speaker is Hello Kitty. Loved this & excited to read Age of Glass :')
Displaying 1 of 1 review