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Chimeric Machines
This collection from rising author Lucy A. Snyder offers three dozen poems to delight readers who enjoy sly wordplay and subtle allusion, high intelligence and fierce heart. "Snyder's work is complex yet grounded. You can read it on several levels and it'll work on each and every one. It's lyrical but rooted in authenticity and validity. There's truth here, and tackling the truth is the highest calling of any poet. "She's been through the trenches; she knows the way the world comes down. You can feel it in the work. You're not just looking at words in a book, you're regarding a life that's been opened up and splashed down on the page. This lady is not only courageous, she's fearless. We need more like her to give us that grand plucking of the guts." - Tom Piccirilli, author of The Midnight Road and Waiting My Turn to Go Under the Knife, from his introduction "There is nothing illusory or mechanical about these poems. They take us on a marvelously eclectic journey, with a cast that includes a black hole voicing its thoughts and a dead man coming 'Home For the Holidays.' Read and be dazzled." - Christopher Conlon, author of Mary Falls: Requiem for Mrs. Surratt and Midnight on Mourn Street Winner of the 2009 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Poetry.
92 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2009
108 people want to read
About the author
Lucy A. Snyder
143 books622 followersLucy A. Snyder is a five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning writer and the author of the forthcoming Tor Nightfire novel Sister, Maiden, Monster. She also wrote the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, and Switchblade Goddess, the nonfiction book Shooting Yourself in the Head For Fun and Profit: A Writer's Survival Guide, the poetry collections Exposed Nerves and Chimeric Machines and the story collections Halloween Season, Garden of Eldritch Delights, While the Black Stars Burn, Soft Apocalypses, Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger.
Her writing has been translated into French, Italian, Russian, Czech and Japanese editions and has appeared in publications such as Apex Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, Steampunk World, In the Court of the Yellow King, Shadows Over Main Street, Qualia Nous, Seize The Night, Scary Out There, and Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 5.
She writes a column for Horror World and has written materials for the D6xD6 role-playing game system. In her day job, she edits online college courses for universities worldwide and occasionally helps write educational games.
Lucy lives in Columbus, Ohio and is a mentor in Seton Hill University's MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction. You can learn more about her at www.lucysnyder.com and you can follow her on Twitter at @LucyASnyder.
Her writing has been translated into French, Italian, Russian, Czech and Japanese editions and has appeared in publications such as Apex Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, Steampunk World, In the Court of the Yellow King, Shadows Over Main Street, Qualia Nous, Seize The Night, Scary Out There, and Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 5.
She writes a column for Horror World and has written materials for the D6xD6 role-playing game system. In her day job, she edits online college courses for universities worldwide and occasionally helps write educational games.
Lucy lives in Columbus, Ohio and is a mentor in Seton Hill University's MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction. You can learn more about her at www.lucysnyder.com and you can follow her on Twitter at @LucyASnyder.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 19, 2011
Lucy A. Snyder was winner of the 2009 Bram Stoker Award: Superior Achievement in Poetry.
Chimeric Machines is, simply, a delight. Fifteen of the thirty-eight included poems had been previously published, over nine years, in various pro and semi-pro markets, including Strange Horizons, Chiaroscuro, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine. I should say up front that Lucy is one of a handful of my favorite poets—her creations tend to tweak me just so: elegant, grounded, visceral, playful, knowledgeable, erudite, educated...she knows a lot about a lot, including the feel of language, and puts it all to good use.
Tom Piccirilli's introduction is short, quirky, and a great way to set the mood before you dive in. Consider it a palate cleanser for the ever-fresh sashimi Lucy slices the world into. The book is broken into seven courses: Technica, Quiet Places, Dark Dreams, Crete Kentucky, Daughters of Typhon, Strange Corners, and Unshelled Evolution. Some sections are more coherent than others, but, for me, the first was the strongest punch. I made notes on each poem as I went, and so many of them, first time through, were just, "Yes. Oh Yes.", or "Delightful", or "*hee*". That's where she hits me.
The leading piece, "Modernism", is simple, but oh-so-elegant, beautifully wry, and hits on several levels. It's two brief stanzas, both relating the same scene, speaking on classical art and modern art, life, perspective, and it is...delightfully wrong, which is a mode I think Lucy aims for frequently.
"And There in the Machine, Virginia Finally Stood Up" is a prose poem, and not what you might expect from the collection's title, but perhaps all the more powerful for that. Three pages long, a lifetime, but I wouldn't do the themes justice by explaining them. The poem does them justice, in spades. My only qualm is that the end is perhaps a bit simple, and glib, in comparison. But there is a lot of glib, throughout, and it's something she does very well.
"Subtlety", which GUD originally published in Issue 2, gets a special call-out in the introduction, and it's well-deserved. From my slush notes, "I was hooked from the first stanza. The third one had me laugh out loud, for real." It still makes me giggle with glee, the punnery, and imagery, and sheer playful twisting of language, which is both subtle and so-very-not.
"Sympathy" had me at "the soylent flesh of every blessed enemy", which, admittedly, was the last line, but I then wrapped around and enjoyed it anew--not because of any particular twist that reshaped the poem as a whole, but because I knew what was coming.
And so on. Some other favorites, in order of presentation, were "glowfish", "Mute Birth", "Home for the Holidays", "Internal Combustion", "Infinite Loop: Girl with Black Eye", "Uncanny Valley Girl", "Book Smarts", "Dumb", "Permian Basin Blues", and "Photograph of a Lady, Circa 1890". I could probably list most of the book.
Not everything worked so perfectly for me; in particular, I didn't enjoy the story-in-five-poems section, "Crete, Kentucky", but I expect folks other than me would enjoy it more. These poems were less playful, more focused on telling the story; there's still some poetry there, but I don't think it's up to the rest of the collection.
And, overall, where I have a complaint, I think it's rooted largely the same—most of her poetry is so strong, that when it's not doing it's thing 110%, it falls a little flat, for me. Sometimes the poem is just too on-the-nose, or saying something I've read too many times without her characteristic energy; in one case she uses a gimmick twice ("Infinite Loop: Girl with Black Eye" and "Looped"; and "Infinite Loop: Girl with Black Eye" just does it much better than the other, I think); and another she hits a theme twice, and again, not so much as extends it, but does it better in one than in the other ("Ocean" vs. "Photograph of a Lady, Circa 1890").
My complaints are few and far between, and I mostly mention them so as to not over-sell you on some mythical collection that no one would ever find fault with. This is a brilliant collection. If you enjoy poetry, speculative fiction, language, life, or any combination thereof, you should really check it out.
Lucy A. Snyder was winner of the 2009 Bram Stoker Award: Superior Achievement in Poetry.
[The review copy was given to our reviewer and will be kept]
Chimeric Machines is, simply, a delight. Fifteen of the thirty-eight included poems had been previously published, over nine years, in various pro and semi-pro markets, including Strange Horizons, Chiaroscuro, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine. I should say up front that Lucy is one of a handful of my favorite poets—her creations tend to tweak me just so: elegant, grounded, visceral, playful, knowledgeable, erudite, educated...she knows a lot about a lot, including the feel of language, and puts it all to good use.
Tom Piccirilli's introduction is short, quirky, and a great way to set the mood before you dive in. Consider it a palate cleanser for the ever-fresh sashimi Lucy slices the world into. The book is broken into seven courses: Technica, Quiet Places, Dark Dreams, Crete Kentucky, Daughters of Typhon, Strange Corners, and Unshelled Evolution. Some sections are more coherent than others, but, for me, the first was the strongest punch. I made notes on each poem as I went, and so many of them, first time through, were just, "Yes. Oh Yes.", or "Delightful", or "*hee*". That's where she hits me.
The leading piece, "Modernism", is simple, but oh-so-elegant, beautifully wry, and hits on several levels. It's two brief stanzas, both relating the same scene, speaking on classical art and modern art, life, perspective, and it is...delightfully wrong, which is a mode I think Lucy aims for frequently.
"And There in the Machine, Virginia Finally Stood Up" is a prose poem, and not what you might expect from the collection's title, but perhaps all the more powerful for that. Three pages long, a lifetime, but I wouldn't do the themes justice by explaining them. The poem does them justice, in spades. My only qualm is that the end is perhaps a bit simple, and glib, in comparison. But there is a lot of glib, throughout, and it's something she does very well.
"Subtlety", which GUD originally published in Issue 2, gets a special call-out in the introduction, and it's well-deserved. From my slush notes, "I was hooked from the first stanza. The third one had me laugh out loud, for real." It still makes me giggle with glee, the punnery, and imagery, and sheer playful twisting of language, which is both subtle and so-very-not.
"Sympathy" had me at "the soylent flesh of every blessed enemy", which, admittedly, was the last line, but I then wrapped around and enjoyed it anew--not because of any particular twist that reshaped the poem as a whole, but because I knew what was coming.
And so on. Some other favorites, in order of presentation, were "glowfish", "Mute Birth", "Home for the Holidays", "Internal Combustion", "Infinite Loop: Girl with Black Eye", "Uncanny Valley Girl", "Book Smarts", "Dumb", "Permian Basin Blues", and "Photograph of a Lady, Circa 1890". I could probably list most of the book.
Not everything worked so perfectly for me; in particular, I didn't enjoy the story-in-five-poems section, "Crete, Kentucky", but I expect folks other than me would enjoy it more. These poems were less playful, more focused on telling the story; there's still some poetry there, but I don't think it's up to the rest of the collection.
And, overall, where I have a complaint, I think it's rooted largely the same—most of her poetry is so strong, that when it's not doing it's thing 110%, it falls a little flat, for me. Sometimes the poem is just too on-the-nose, or saying something I've read too many times without her characteristic energy; in one case she uses a gimmick twice ("Infinite Loop: Girl with Black Eye" and "Looped"; and "Infinite Loop: Girl with Black Eye" just does it much better than the other, I think); and another she hits a theme twice, and again, not so much as extends it, but does it better in one than in the other ("Ocean" vs. "Photograph of a Lady, Circa 1890").
My complaints are few and far between, and I mostly mention them so as to not over-sell you on some mythical collection that no one would ever find fault with. This is a brilliant collection. If you enjoy poetry, speculative fiction, language, life, or any combination thereof, you should really check it out.
Lucy A. Snyder was winner of the 2009 Bram Stoker Award: Superior Achievement in Poetry.
[The review copy was given to our reviewer and will be kept]
February 28, 2021
Discovered this via a reading challenge prompt and glad I did as I will definitely read more from the writer. Recommend not choosing the audio version as the reader's voice frequently sounds computer generated.
Read
June 30, 2021Cringe.
July 19, 2009
This a delightful volume of poetry. I don't have any great knowledge of poetry, but I can appreciate the careful way the words are crafted together to evoke strong emotions; by turns humorous, insightful, and quietly profound. I read it twice; once quickly and then again slowly to have time to contemplate.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews