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Kissing Dead Girls
Gertrude Stein's work is co-opted and re-seen in an attempt to unpack the relationship between love and war; Walt Whitman makes a command performance in dismembered bits of forced formal verse; and "The Exorcist" and "The Devil in Miss Jones" are sutured together in an attempt to locate the horror of desire. Fusing pornography and postfeminist theory, t...more
Paperback, 144 pages
Published
March 10th 2008
by Soft Skull Press
(first published 2007)
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Utterly gorgeous, provocative, enticing book of poems. Gottlieb is incredible - bought this book after meeting her at Bluestockings in NYC. A contemporary Sylvia Plath in her depth, insight, and mastery of words.
Beautifully disturbing poetry. Uniquely writin
San Francisco-based performance poet Daphne Gottlieb is one of the most innovative voices in American poetry today, having carved out a space for herself out on the distant intersection of avant-garde verse, feminist theory, and popular culture. Her latest volume, Kissing Dead Girls, is another gleeful, high-speed smear of mordant humor, historical mash-up, and feral exploration of bodies, hearts, fluids, emotions, and scars. If in total the book is less startling and focused than Final Girl, he...more
I first saw her read on a trip to San Francisco...I had no clue who she was, but by her style, could kind of guess what she was about. And when she started reading, she was so strong, so powerful; a force to be reckoned with. Her poems moved far beyond what I expected, and moved me more than I can explain. I worried that it wouldn't translate to paper, that since I am not a poet myself, the book wouldn't contain that same spark that covered my whole body in chills when she read. I was wrong.
Absolutely loved it. The poems were all fresh and provocative, so beautifully written. Vivid prose and verse. Several of the poems touched me quite profoundly. I cannot wait to read more of Gottlieb's work.
it's not really short stories. it's more like short pieces and poems intermixed with unclassifiable stuff. the entire thing is like walking into an art gallery. a lot of the pieces are based off something already in the world, an interview, a book, a painting. like any art gallery exhibit, there's stuff i love, stuff that's ok or not very good, and stuff i just plain don't get.
I really liked Final Girl. I think she's awesome, and maybe I just need to read poetry much differently and more slowly than I do. Also if it was called experimental fiction, would I be way more into it and willing to take the time to read and re-read? Probably. I'm a dick like that.
I hate to say it, but I really just didn't get it. I think I really enjoyed maybe one of the poems in the book, but the rest just weren't for me. I either had no idea what the author was saying or I was repulsed by it.
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Daphne Gottlieb is a San Francisco-based Performance Poet.
Gottlieb has served as the poetry editor of the online queer literary magazine Lodestar Quarterly and was a co-organizer of ForWord Girls, a first spoken word festival for anyone who is, has been or will be a girl, which was held in September 2002.
She has taught at New College of California, and has also performed an...more
More about Daphne Gottlieb...
Gottlieb has served as the poetry editor of the online queer literary magazine Lodestar Quarterly and was a co-organizer of ForWord Girls, a first spoken word festival for anyone who is, has been or will be a girl, which was held in September 2002.
She has taught at New College of California, and has also performed an...more
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“As she bends for a Kleenex in the dark, I am thinking of other girls: the girl I loved who fell in love with a lion--she lost her head over it--we just necked a lot; of the girl who fell in love with the tightrope, got addicted to getting high wired and nothing else was enough; all the beautiful, damaged women who have come through my life and I wonder what would have happened if I'd met them sooner, what they were like before they were so badly wounded. All this time I thought I'd been kissing, but maybe I'm always doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, kissing dead girls in hopes that the heart will start again. Where there's breath, I've heard, there's hope.”
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