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Review by Irene Koronas


Pleasure Trout

Gloria Mindock

Copyright © 2013 by Gloria Mindock

Muddy River Books

Brookline MA

Softbound, 42 pages, $7.00


“I'm a strange woman-

You can see this from my scratched heart”


Pleasure Trout presents the fanciful seriousness poetry

often offers in an age of crisis. Mindock knows how to

place words in verse. Each poem adds humor and seriousness

just as surrealism and the Dadaist did:


“Chances are I'm slender and

love great atoms and marble

men anointed with

a diaphragm that mixes

itself with bronze...”


Her verse is fanciful and dramatic. After several readings

we come to understand the author’s approach to poetry.

How ridiculous some experiences are. How splendor

is an artificial sweetener as well as a poetic word. I'm

reminded of the Dadaist writers, especially Hans Arp,

who was both a painter and a poet, often the two were done

simultaneously. Deconstructing experiences and constructing

from the threat of war. The constant threat of war led the Dada

writers and actors to proclaim and appear to be foolish

'banterers', dancing to their stress related environment,

stepping into the sublime instead of relating to the actual

threats and actual strife of living during war times:


“Every hour a new one elected

Still no word

A look, a suffering, a love

to keep outsiders out


as light bulbs trace

this guard of personal

handling-

this possessiveness...



Sometimes we all sit in a

circle

hovering in a cave

This trespasser must be

sought!


Every second the crying of

a wolf emerges inside one of us”


I'm inspired and I'm blown away by the profound agony

in the poems. How miss-translations can lend credence

to our time and to the times past. Gloria's sentences do

not end with a period. Each sentence starts with capitalization.

Some of her verse uses ! exclamation to end the sentence

and an occasional question mark emphasizes the importance

the verse exclaims, how important word juxtaposition implies

meaning or the lack of meaning which also insinuates through

the lack of meaning the deconstruction of meaning. An endless

repetition of meanings:


“Unless you know me, you don't”


Pleasure Trout is the best experimental writing done in this

century, (in my humble opinion.) If that doesn't get you to

run to read, then, “It is pointless/So gruesome/ Is this

urban life?”


Irene Koronas

Poetry Editor: Wilderness House Literary Review

Reviewer: Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene