<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Doom: Love Poems for Supervillains <\/p>\n The first thing you need to know about Natalie Zina Walschots\u2019 Doom: Love Poems for Supervillains<\/em> is that it is actually a collection of love poems for supervillains; it\u2019s not a misleading title. But these aren\u2019t your grandmother\u2019s love poems, unless your grandmother was way out there and well ahead of her time, or, perhaps, if she was herself a supervillain. No, Doom <\/em>is filled with the sadomasochism, domination and general violence you might expect to emerge from poems about the people, creatures or strongholds we need to threaten our fantasy worlds so that the virtuous can save it. The virtuous superheroes, meanwhile, are will loved but they mostly lack the depth and variety of their nemeses. Evil is more interesting.<\/p>\n Walschots takes full advantage of that fact. At 116 pages, Doom<\/em> is a longish collection, and its density makes it feel longer. 52 different supervillains and supervillain hideouts appear in this collection, with 15 receiving short sequences with which to tilt their fancies. That\u2019s a lot to take in, and this reviewer must admit to being a casual pursuer of comic books, so there must be subtleties, references and the like that were lost on me. But such relative unfamiliarity isn\u2019t punitive to the reader. Walschots might know more about supervillains than you do, but enough of them (The Joker, Doom, Scarecrow, Green Goblin) are familiar to most people and not knowing those rarer ones (for me: Beef, Scylla, Black Heart, Darkseid, etc.) do not render those poems addressed to them inaccessible. (Suggestion: you should gift this to that person you know who loves comic books but hasn\u2019t ever read a collection of poems.)<\/p>\n The second essential thing to note about Doom<\/em> is its lyricism. These poems are dense, like 12-words-in-a-poem-that-still-tries-to-say-a-lot dense. At her best, Walschots has succeeded in squeezing these poems into crazy thick webs that mix fear, sensuality a dark and violent kinkiness, all overseen by that familiar sense of humour and nerdiness that usually accompanies an encyclopedic knowledge of deep but still somewhat specialized pop culture phenomena (I\u2019m thinking of professional Wrestling, sports in general, certain musical genres, etc., all of which are known to the general public, but are known intimately by a chosen few devoted followers).<\/p>\n Let\u2019s get to how she fits all that in. Take \u201cOre\u201d<\/em> from the \u201cMagneto\u201d sequence, quoted in full:<\/p>\n pluck the fillings from my teeth<\/p>\n pull the metal from my head<\/p>\n <\/p>\n strip-mine me bare<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The speaker is asking for a devastation Magneto is particularly suited to provide as if devastation were a thing to long for, because in Doom<\/em> it is. Note the efficiency here: in just 23 words we get a range of tones: the fear and consequences of an impending loss (of protective head plates and fillings), the ecstasy of submitting to great power (Christian Gray\u2019s got nothin\u2019), and the insider humour of one who has thought about Magneto a lot<\/em>. And then there\u2019s the verbal density. As in most of this book, you get the feeling not that no unnecessary word is used, but that no unnecessary words were used, and then she cut more words out. \u201cOre\u201d<\/em> shifts from description in line one to the imperative in the last three; this is accomplished silently in the stanza break. The poem also leaves everything but its core out. We know nothing of context here, nothing of motivation; all we know is the speaker\u2019s desire, with the white space surrounding this tiny poem the only extrapolation of the surrounding scene.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the basic template of the poems in Doom: <\/em>short lyrics or lyric sequences directly addressing or describing the subject. There\u2019s no narrative, no connection between the subjects, no development in the lone speaker who guides us throughout. As a result, this book does resemble a static \u201cRogue Gallery\u201d\u2014the term used to describe the villain-centred sections in Doom<\/em>\u2014with the villains\u2019 mug shots replaced with erotic fantasies described with a ruthless brevity that restricts the language from going anywhere near the conversational. On an intellectual level, this works: how better to mimic the \u201cdominance,\u201d \u201cbondage,\u201d and \u201cdestruction\u201d suggested in the section titles and borne out in the lines than to dominate the line itself, to force the line into an unnaturally restrained posture? Here are a few examples of this word-bondage at work:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From \u201cWrought,\u201d<\/em> found in the \u201cMagneto\u201d sequence:<\/p>\n but eyes<\/p>\n are emeraldine<\/p>\n and answer<\/p>\n <\/p>\n whisper<\/p>\n with arcs<\/p>\n of organic<\/p>\n polymers panic<\/p>\n free radicals<\/p>\n in unstable air<\/p>\n <\/p>\n from \u201cLady Deathstrike:\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n with body modification<\/p>\n all flesh becomes sheath<\/p>\n <\/p>\n skin enrobed<\/p>\n widen to skeletal gauge<\/p>\n <\/p>\n labial tissue stretched<\/p>\n a bat\u2019s veiny wing<\/p>\n<\/div>\n a muscle relaxant<\/p>\n and salivation inhibitor<\/p>\n <\/p>\n fireworks<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This poem is found in the \u201cArkham Asylum\u201d sequence, and its companions there are equally evasive. Here\u2019s the end of \u201cPatient File,\u201d <\/em>which opens the sequence:<\/p>\n hysterical licks<\/p>\n giggles swigs<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There are words I recognize in both of these poems, and I can sense a lunatic-asylum vibe the from list in \u201cShock Therapy,\u201d<\/em> and the non-description in \u201cPatient File,\u201d<\/em> but these poems produce vague associations at best, and non-sense at worst. For instance, what could \u201cgiggles swigs\u201d possibly mean, and how do you heal \u201celliptical\u201d? The proceeding two stanzas of \u201cPatient File\u201d <\/em>offer nothing to clarify, although we do learn that the patient \u201csobs articular,\u201d whatever that means. In the end, it\u2019s not clear what the reader is supposed to with \u201cArkham Asylum.\u201d There\u2019s not enough there to paint any kind of scene or situation, as you can in \u201cOre\u201d <\/em>(discussed above). Elsewhere in the book the poems gain a musical advantage when stripped of their clarity, but in \u201cPatient File,\u201d<\/em> Walscotts writes, \u201cshe craves an orcular cavity\/aqueous always humorous.\u201d These lines tell us nothing, and do so clumsily.<\/p>\n That said, \u201cArkham Asylum\u201d is not representative of the book, only of a strain that runs through it. This strain refuses to let any air in, threatening to suffocate the poems. If Walscott is playing dominatrix to her poems here, she at times can take it too far, so that it\u2019s slightly sickening to watch the poems writhe in the agony of their subjugation. Again, you can argue this matches the material: after all, Walschots does describe, in \u201cBeetle,\u201d \u201cyour bulk in my lungs\/tinkering\/with my frequencies.\u201d But when Walschots cracks the window open just a bit, that rush of air can be quite refreshing. Here is \u201cMaster Antagonist\u201d <\/em>from the \u201cDarkseid\u201d sequence:<\/p>\n your plundered suns<\/p>\n clink, chains link<\/p>\n <\/p>\n bound her<\/p>\n iron sings<\/p>\n <\/p>\n flesh sculpts<\/p>\n around fists<\/p>\n disappointment\u2019s sheer grip.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Still not very clear here, but this poem is clear enough that we can imagine, for instance, that \u201ciron sings\u201d refers to the ecstatic clasping of restraints, and that the final line does some kind of summing up. Then there is the musical advantage that is had at the expense of the purposeful vagueness: the \u201ci” sound rings throughout (\u201clicked,\u201d \u201clips,\u201d \u201cclink,\u201d \u201clink,\u201d \u201csings,\u201d \u201cfists,\u201d \u201cgrip\u201d) and the dynamic sound companioning that\u2019s happening here is made to stand out all the more because there are 20 words in the whole poem and seven of them are mono-syllables with an \u201ci\u201d in the middle. But while they all share that sound, only two form perfect rhymes. That\u2019s nice use of repetition and variation, with both happening in a very compressed space (within one syllable) at the same time: each repetition of \u201ci\u201d is coupled with the slanting effect of the differing sounds surrounding that letter.<\/p>\n All told, Walschots has given us an often impressive, entertaining and evocative book. Some will certainly be turned off by the tightly constrained lines, but for those not bothered by this, Doom <\/em>might very well get you going. It\u2019s the kind of book you dip in and out of; it\u2019s not necessary to read it straight through. Doom <\/em>is also a welcome foray, especially for the lyric poem, into unfamiliar (for poetry) yet common (for everyone) and deep territory. That content-based novelty does not excuse Walschots\u2019 occasional over-constraining of the line and sentence, which can come off as gimmicky and give the reader the sense that she\u2019s copping out (obscurity can be so easy), but that overworking is more than balanced out by the book\u2019s genuine poetic achievements. It\u2019s also just cool that she wrote a whole book about supervillains, one that at its best lends a fresh perspective to the global pop phenomenon that is comic books, while only occasionally losing the fun inherent to that form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Poetry Review: Fifty Shades of Evil Doom: Love Poems for Supervillains by Natalie Zina Walschots London, ON: Insomniac, 2012 112pp. $12.24 The first thing you need to know about Natalie Zina Walschots\u2019 Doom: Love Poems for Supervillains is that it is actually a collection of love poems for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":766,"parent":93,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-128","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":672,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128\/revisions\/672"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/93"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/em>by Natalie Zina Walschots
\nLondon, ON: Insomniac, 2012
\n112pp. $12.24<\/p>\n
\nCertainly, the impressive restraint on display in Doom <\/em>creates some very nice sonic moments (\u201ceyes\/are emerldine\/and answer,\u201d \u201call flesh becomes sheath\u201d) that are brought out by the semantic and grammatical gaps Walschots\u2019 tight prosodic grip imposes. But while the poet can count on the reader to fight through much of the opaqueness those gaps create, and to relish the resulting lyrical punch, that fight can at times become too much of burden on the reader, and is at times not worth it. Such is the case in \u201cShock Therapy:\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n