I am a writer so I love words and this book of poetry shows Snyder's complete understanding of the words she will use to create an impact and a story telling full of imagery. I read the entire work and re-read a few since I received this book in October. It is delicious and I recommend this book to all lovers of words put together smartly and breath-taking poetry. ( )

Those of you who read dark fiction may already be familiar with the work of Lucy Snyder or, more specifically, with her short story collections, the humorous and delightfully twisted Installing Linux on a Dead Badger and Other Oddities and the award-winning Sparks and Shadows . Chimeric Machines, Snyder's recently released collection of poetry, reads like something you'd dip into once you were securely snuggled under an afghan while the October wind claws against your house. These poems have teeth and nails, and they aren't afraid to use them. However, despite the shiveringly delightful edge the poems in Chimeric Machines possess, they never lose touch with common joys and pains and sorrows and dreams, with the forces that shape us and our dreams and desires for better...and for worse.

The collection is arranged in seven sections, each with a distinct focus and tone. The "Crete, Kentucky" section features poems set in the fictional town that unfold into a larger narrative as characters cross over between them, much like Stephen King does in his novels. If the narrators and characters in this section are a bit unrefined, the poems themselves often have more formal structures like the sestina "Flyboy," the villanelle "Terror White," and the sonnet-esque "Cissy Cocalus," which creates lovely tension between the form and content.

While the sections of the collection do tend to group poems thematically, I don't mean to suggest that there aren't overarching themes that bind the whole together. One such thread (which includes poems like "And There in the Machine, Virginia Finally Stood Up," "Dumb," and the "Daughters of Typhon" section) focuses on the quiet brutalities of everyday life that crush or twist our dreams, turning them against us, turning them into potent poisons.

One of my favorite sections of the collection was the one titled "Quiet Places." Many of these poems blend shadows and brightness, the quiet, aching losses and deep loves that are family. Synder's poem "glowfish," is about the loss of a mother, the ties of blood that bind generations, told in language that weaves science and myth, of life and death,

the Moirae weave
a tricky double-helix
genes don't lie
but they can hide
more spiders
than Arachnae's closet

while her "Mute Birth" is about a babe who comes perilously close to dying the day he was born,

his faint cardiac flutter,
oxygen fading in his veins,
skin pasty, then purpling
dark as slate pavestones
slicked with winter rain

Another favorite section is "Dark Dreams," which contains poems that are visceral and monstrous, their horrors the extraordinary counterpoint to the more ordinary ones of "Quiet Places." Standouts in this grouping include "Prometheus,"

Let me be your Adam.
Yank a rib from my trembling flank
and pleasure yourself upon it
until my ears ring with your ecstasy.

and the "The Monster Between the Sparks,"

I am the death you cannot see
when you gaze upon your starry skies.
Your telescopes, they lie to you
when they show a cosmos glittering
with a million firey gems;
.........
And when you come I'll crush you
to my frozen breast and take you to my heart
of darkness, and your pain will keep me warm.

Since we are talking about the extraordinary, one extraordinary thing about Synder's writing is the way that she captures the commonplace and elevates it, reinvents and reinvigorates it, imbues it with a sense of wonder. In the prose poem "Ocean," readers are carried along on the power of images like:

The night tide was thick with phosphorescent plankton that flashed in green alarm at any disturbance. Every crashing wave sent up a spray of ghostly fireworks. Glowing sea foam oozed like lava in the crevices of the jagged black rocks.

while "Searching for Signs of Life at the Bottom of a Cup of Cold Coffee" offers readers lines like:

Maybe living is just a matter of respiration and perspiration:
experiences inhaled, ideas exhaled, decisions sweated out.
Maybe Shakespeare was right all along: it's acting the part
you've accepted for yourself, heartbeat never quite steady,
as you manage to celebrate every scene, even as the last reel
in the camera is slowly rolling onto its cold gray spool.

I've only mentioned a few of the poems that resonated strongly with me in Snyder's collection. I could list at least as many more that drew smiles or shivers or both, but rather than do that, why don't you check out the collection yourself? If you do, you'll find the poems in Chimeric Machines are accessible without being simple, lyrical without being overly ornate, provocative without being lurid, and emotionally powerful and genuine without being sentimental. Those things make it a welcome addition to my library.

Reviewed here: http://www.gorelets.com/blog/not-dead-yet-print-reviews/flash-reviews-of-semi-au...