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Piano Rats
Coming out October 2011, a collection of fresh, gritty, urban prose poetry by a young Chicago writer we're excited about, Ms. Franki Elliot. Franki is a twenty-something living in Chicago. This is her first book. Pre-order your copy at curbsidesplendor.com.
What’s it about? It’s about you. Something you said to me five years ago, five days ago, five minutes ago. It’s about sex, honesty, sadness, falling in and out of love, firsts and lasts, awkward moments. It’s my secrets and yours.
Blurbs / Praise:
"The 44 pieces in Franki Elliot’s Piano Rats are like the best kind of chance meetings—weird and unsettling, specific and transformative. They are Frank O’Hara meets Ellen Kennedy, “first kiss” meets “fuck off,” “hell” meets “rainstorm,” poetry meets prose, narrative meets lyric, trailer park meets city street. But they are also entirely themselves, places where you “remember who you wanted to be.””
~Kathleen Rooney, author of Oneiromance (an epithalamion), managing editor of Rose Metal Press.
"Piano Rats is a homage to being stuck between where you've been and where you still might go. It's just that you haven't quite figured out how to escape where you've been and frankly you have know no idea what comes next. And it is this tension of stuckness in all its messy, druggy, sometimes hopeful, youthful confusion that lives here in these poems and explodes across these pages, all oozy and terribly electric."
~Ben Tanzer, author of of Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine, 99 Problems, My Father's House, and You Can Make Him Like You, among others.
"I want to find Franki Elliot, really find her, and hug her hard and whisper that it is going be okay. I want to push her away because I know she won't believe me, and why should she? I want to hug her because she is wildly honest as she depicts the awkward reality of a twenty-something in Chicago. In Piano Rats you will find a young women drowning in sadness, and not worried about how she can hide it. Franki Elliot exposes what most bury beneath layers of shallow conversations, bottles of alcohol, and innuendo. She will subtly make you love her and hate her in the matter of a few well placed lines."
~Jason Behrands, managing editor of Orange Alert Press.
"From page one, Franki's honesty and ability to drop an F-Bomb won my heart. Here is a woman who is no stranger to love. She’s suffered its beauty, its jealousy, and its brutal end. Her poetry is like a mirror hanging on my wall, reflecting my own emotions and thoughts back at me. She makes me want to scream "Fuck You" to every guy I dated who didn't "get me". She makes me want to get behind the pretty words people throw around, quit beating around the bush, and see things for what they really are. She creates a language of her own, breathing out lines like: " Love sometimes is just another word for jealousy", and "We can't save ourselves from anything that's supposed to happen""
~Lori Hettler of The Next Best Book Club (TNBBC) Blog.
"Contemporary poetry with urban flair, driven by madness, insecurity, and raw emotion."
~Lavinia Ludlow, author of Alt.Punk.
What’s it about? It’s about you. Something you said to me five years ago, five days ago, five minutes ago. It’s about sex, honesty, sadness, falling in and out of love, firsts and lasts, awkward moments. It’s my secrets and yours.
Blurbs / Praise:
"The 44 pieces in Franki Elliot’s Piano Rats are like the best kind of chance meetings—weird and unsettling, specific and transformative. They are Frank O’Hara meets Ellen Kennedy, “first kiss” meets “fuck off,” “hell” meets “rainstorm,” poetry meets prose, narrative meets lyric, trailer park meets city street. But they are also entirely themselves, places where you “remember who you wanted to be.””
~Kathleen Rooney, author of Oneiromance (an epithalamion), managing editor of Rose Metal Press.
"Piano Rats is a homage to being stuck between where you've been and where you still might go. It's just that you haven't quite figured out how to escape where you've been and frankly you have know no idea what comes next. And it is this tension of stuckness in all its messy, druggy, sometimes hopeful, youthful confusion that lives here in these poems and explodes across these pages, all oozy and terribly electric."
~Ben Tanzer, author of of Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine, 99 Problems, My Father's House, and You Can Make Him Like You, among others.
"I want to find Franki Elliot, really find her, and hug her hard and whisper that it is going be okay. I want to push her away because I know she won't believe me, and why should she? I want to hug her because she is wildly honest as she depicts the awkward reality of a twenty-something in Chicago. In Piano Rats you will find a young women drowning in sadness, and not worried about how she can hide it. Franki Elliot exposes what most bury beneath layers of shallow conversations, bottles of alcohol, and innuendo. She will subtly make you love her and hate her in the matter of a few well placed lines."
~Jason Behrands, managing editor of Orange Alert Press.
"From page one, Franki's honesty and ability to drop an F-Bomb won my heart. Here is a woman who is no stranger to love. She’s suffered its beauty, its jealousy, and its brutal end. Her poetry is like a mirror hanging on my wall, reflecting my own emotions and thoughts back at me. She makes me want to scream "Fuck You" to every guy I dated who didn't "get me". She makes me want to get behind the pretty words people throw around, quit beating around the bush, and see things for what they really are. She creates a language of her own, breathing out lines like: " Love sometimes is just another word for jealousy", and "We can't save ourselves from anything that's supposed to happen""
~Lori Hettler of The Next Best Book Club (TNBBC) Blog.
"Contemporary poetry with urban flair, driven by madness, insecurity, and raw emotion."
~Lavinia Ludlow, author of Alt.Punk.
- GenresPoetry
84 pages, Paperback
First published October 14, 2011
3 people are currently reading
85 people want to read
About the author
Franki Elliot
5 books16 followersFranki Elliot is the critically acclaimed author of Stories for People Who Hate Love (2018), Piano Rats and Kiss as Many Women as You Can (via Curbside Splendor Publishing). She has received praise from The Paris Review, Chicago Tribune, Paper Magazine, Time Out, etc.
The Chicago Tribune says Elliot writes poetry for people who hate poetry.
The Paris Review named her book Piano Rats as "awkward, offensive and ultimately heartbreaking."
The Chicago Tribune says Elliot writes poetry for people who hate poetry.
The Paris Review named her book Piano Rats as "awkward, offensive and ultimately heartbreaking."
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
October 17, 2011
I stood outside the gallery for a few minutes looking at all the legs walking the floor with their tights and naked thighs and the blue-jeaned boys. I didn't want to go inside because I was alone and everyone seemed to know each other, but that's really just how I always feel when I walk into a room. Like everyone knows everyone else and who the fuck am I and what the fuck am I doing here and someone is going to ask me to leave in a not-so-polite tone sometime soon. So I sit and stare through the window and pull on a cigarette and decide to go inside because fuck it, her publisher published one of my poems and I'm an artist and a writer even though no one knows it and if someone asks what I'm doing there I'll just say I'm looking at all of the cute shoes shuffling around the floor.
I went to the book release party for Piano Rats tonight and walked around the room feeling underdressed and disgusted by the Marcel Duchamp copycat crap on the walls of the second room at the Hinge Gallery on Chicago Ave. Wherever I moved, I was in the way, so I walked back outside after buying the chapbook and sat in my car, reading it, so I wouldn't have to go home and feel like I failed again at going out for a night.
Franki Elliot was called one of the dirtiest minds in Chicago, but I don't think that's an apt description. I think it was said lovingly, though, and that's a good thing, but still, I don't find anything dirty in her writing. I find it to be honest. Or as honest as any poet can be. I found myself re-reading some of the work and skimming through other pieces that didn't have as much weight. That's really the surprise here, in this collection. Its a heavyweight disguised and fighting under its weight class. Some of these pieces can kill a man if he reads them in the wrong, or right, state of mind.
I don't want to add a bunch of adjectives here like 'electrifying' and 'intelligent' and 'literary'. I don't want to blow smoke up her skirt either, but I want to lay the fair amount of praise right down to the bone. But I'm just not sure how to do that. So maybe I will lay down a slew of adjectives and let it go at that.
The pieces don't dance on the page, they lurch and step heavily from one word to the other, hulking and imposing, but also stalking the reader hellbent on landing a killing blow. It is electrifying in the same way it thrills you to look at a one-handed magazine for the first time when you're twelve. Its unashamed in its admittance of its flaws and mistakes and its honesty embarrasses you in a way that makes you want to hurriedly turn the page with a blush because it struck an exposed nerve, the same one you've been tonguing for years.
As with most collections, though, some of the work faulters and flounders. Some of it feels unfinished, some of it feels too bare for its own good. But if this is the first work of Franki Elliot, then we have only great things to look forward to from now on.
Grade: B
I went to the book release party for Piano Rats tonight and walked around the room feeling underdressed and disgusted by the Marcel Duchamp copycat crap on the walls of the second room at the Hinge Gallery on Chicago Ave. Wherever I moved, I was in the way, so I walked back outside after buying the chapbook and sat in my car, reading it, so I wouldn't have to go home and feel like I failed again at going out for a night.
Franki Elliot was called one of the dirtiest minds in Chicago, but I don't think that's an apt description. I think it was said lovingly, though, and that's a good thing, but still, I don't find anything dirty in her writing. I find it to be honest. Or as honest as any poet can be. I found myself re-reading some of the work and skimming through other pieces that didn't have as much weight. That's really the surprise here, in this collection. Its a heavyweight disguised and fighting under its weight class. Some of these pieces can kill a man if he reads them in the wrong, or right, state of mind.
I don't want to add a bunch of adjectives here like 'electrifying' and 'intelligent' and 'literary'. I don't want to blow smoke up her skirt either, but I want to lay the fair amount of praise right down to the bone. But I'm just not sure how to do that. So maybe I will lay down a slew of adjectives and let it go at that.
The pieces don't dance on the page, they lurch and step heavily from one word to the other, hulking and imposing, but also stalking the reader hellbent on landing a killing blow. It is electrifying in the same way it thrills you to look at a one-handed magazine for the first time when you're twelve. Its unashamed in its admittance of its flaws and mistakes and its honesty embarrasses you in a way that makes you want to hurriedly turn the page with a blush because it struck an exposed nerve, the same one you've been tonguing for years.
As with most collections, though, some of the work faulters and flounders. Some of it feels unfinished, some of it feels too bare for its own good. But if this is the first work of Franki Elliot, then we have only great things to look forward to from now on.
Grade: B
September 14, 2011
Oozy and electric.
More - http://bentanzer.blogspot.com/2011/09...
More - http://bentanzer.blogspot.com/2011/09...
December 22, 2011
"Sometimes I run across a poem that makes me second guess my opinion on poetry. It could be a line in the poem that impresses me. Or a person in the poem that makes me wonder what he'd be like in another situation. Or a relationship that makes me want to know if it worked out. Or a memory I have while reading the poem. For me, Piano Rats by Franki Elliot had all of the above."
~Shamontiel L. Vaughn, Chicago Tribune.
"The book is a collection of deeply personal pieces, arranged as free verse poems, though Elliot calls them “stories.” And they do read as stories, the kind told around a kitchen table—or even, in the case of “Nothing,” a recounting of a story that happened while a story was being told around a kitchen table. Most of them detail a down-and-out cast with unbroken spirits, people who predict early deaths but live as if they don’t believe it."
~Jonathan Messinger, books editor of Timeout Chicago.
"The 44 pieces in Franki Elliott’s Piano Rats are like the best kind of chance meetings—weird and unsettling, specific and transformative. They are Frank O’Hara meets Ellen Kennedy, “first kiss” meets “fuck off,” “hell” meets “rainstorm,” poetry meets prose, narrative meets lyric, trailer park meets city street. But they are also entirely themselves, places where you “remember who you wanted to be.””
~Kathleen Rooney, author of Oneiromance (an epithalamion), managing editor of Rose Metal Press.
~Shamontiel L. Vaughn, Chicago Tribune.
"The book is a collection of deeply personal pieces, arranged as free verse poems, though Elliot calls them “stories.” And they do read as stories, the kind told around a kitchen table—or even, in the case of “Nothing,” a recounting of a story that happened while a story was being told around a kitchen table. Most of them detail a down-and-out cast with unbroken spirits, people who predict early deaths but live as if they don’t believe it."
~Jonathan Messinger, books editor of Timeout Chicago.
"The 44 pieces in Franki Elliott’s Piano Rats are like the best kind of chance meetings—weird and unsettling, specific and transformative. They are Frank O’Hara meets Ellen Kennedy, “first kiss” meets “fuck off,” “hell” meets “rainstorm,” poetry meets prose, narrative meets lyric, trailer park meets city street. But they are also entirely themselves, places where you “remember who you wanted to be.””
~Kathleen Rooney, author of Oneiromance (an epithalamion), managing editor of Rose Metal Press.
December 30, 2014
Franki Elliot is basically my role model.
Her words, her voice... is extremely intoxicating and influential. I'm in love with Piano Rats because she writes about all the things I never have the courage to say.
Her words, her voice... is extremely intoxicating and influential. I'm in love with Piano Rats because she writes about all the things I never have the courage to say.
May 1, 2012
Full review forthcoming at Los Angeles Review: http://redhen.org/losangelesreview/
November 21, 2020
This book of precise, bittersweet poems is beautiful. And it fits into the palm of your hand!
March 15, 2017
ah, finally. A new book of poetry that makes me feel something.
August 27, 2011
Read 8/20/11 - 8/21/11
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended
Pgs: 64
Publisher: Curbside Splendor /Oct 2011
Victor David Giron - publisher, editor-in-chief, publicist, author and accountant for Curbside Splendor - sent me an advance PDF of this collection of poems by first time published poet Frankie Elliot. Piano Rats should be available sometime in October.
From page one, her honesty and ability to drop an F-Bomb won my heart. Here is a woman who is no stranger to love - She’s suffered its beauty, its jealousy, and its brutal end. Her poetry is like a mirror hanging on my wall, reflecting my own emotions and thoughts back at me.
She makes me want to scream "Fuck You" to every guy I dated who didn't "get me". She makes me want to get behind the pretty words people throw around, quit beating around the bush, and see things for what they really are. She creates a language of her own, breathing out lines like: "Love sometimes is just another word for jealousy", and "We can't save ourselves from anything that's supposed to happen".
Frankie finds beauty in pain, and I want her to show me how.
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended
Pgs: 64
Publisher: Curbside Splendor /Oct 2011
Victor David Giron - publisher, editor-in-chief, publicist, author and accountant for Curbside Splendor - sent me an advance PDF of this collection of poems by first time published poet Frankie Elliot. Piano Rats should be available sometime in October.
From page one, her honesty and ability to drop an F-Bomb won my heart. Here is a woman who is no stranger to love - She’s suffered its beauty, its jealousy, and its brutal end. Her poetry is like a mirror hanging on my wall, reflecting my own emotions and thoughts back at me.
She makes me want to scream "Fuck You" to every guy I dated who didn't "get me". She makes me want to get behind the pretty words people throw around, quit beating around the bush, and see things for what they really are. She creates a language of her own, breathing out lines like: "Love sometimes is just another word for jealousy", and "We can't save ourselves from anything that's supposed to happen".
Frankie finds beauty in pain, and I want her to show me how.
October 11, 2014
I don't read a lot of poetry, so Franki Elliot's Piano Rats was an intense experience. I was trying to figure out how best to review it, and decided on my CD reviewing method. Overall, this book moved me to smiles and to sniffles, and always made me think. I read many of them twice because I missed so many nuances and nuggets of imagery the first time.
My favorites of the collection:
One Wish - moving
Poetic Memory - intense
Miss In Polish - brought me to tears
The Coldest Person I've Ever Met - built word by word to a perfect conclusion
Slow Process - warm
Milwaukee - 5 stars, plain and simple
Read a lot of poetry? Don't read much poetry at all? Piano Rats is 100% worth your while.
My favorites of the collection:
One Wish - moving
Poetic Memory - intense
Miss In Polish - brought me to tears
The Coldest Person I've Ever Met - built word by word to a perfect conclusion
Slow Process - warm
Milwaukee - 5 stars, plain and simple
Read a lot of poetry? Don't read much poetry at all? Piano Rats is 100% worth your while.
March 7, 2016
Truly beautiful use of language in this book. Filled with so much raw emotion. I could not get enough of it so I just had to go and read everything on the author's tumblr page as well. It felt like a very accurate depiction of life for twenty-somethings in today's world, but more eloquent than I could ever make it!
February 7, 2015
Sharyn has a way with words. She will always find a way into your heart on her typewriter or walking the quiet streets of SF late at night. Anything she writes is worth a read. Very happy to have known her for a bit.
June 28, 2015
Felt like rereading this little poetry collection tonight, as it's been a few years, and glad I did. Great collection and glad to have it on my shelves. Now, off to see if she has anything new out since this was published...
August 22, 2011
I love it.
December 11, 2011
Full review published by Curbside Splendor Publishing: http://www.curbsidesplendor.com/curbs...
May 23, 2015
Stunning.
August 29, 2014
i didnt really understabd the book and if it was a continuous story or not. i read it and i figure out it wasnt. it was ok but easy to read and very short
November 12, 2016
Good light read.
I love her authenticity and story-like writing. I would recommend it to any young adult who has a love for poetry.
I love her authenticity and story-like writing. I would recommend it to any young adult who has a love for poetry.
April 15, 2024
Good poetry. Who'd have thought?
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews