The Twelve Foot Neon Woman

by Loretta Collins Klobah

Against a soundtrack of world music—from salsa to reggae and jazz—and in a vibrant blend of English, Spanish, and Patois, this collection delivers tender and incendiary hymns of homage to the Caribbean, American, and British metropolises. In a poetic form that is lyrical, narrative, sensual, and often experimental, it offers insight into the urgent social issues impacting the everyday world and its extraordinary people. As they seek connections across boundaries of geography, race, ethnicity, language, gender, age, and economic class, these poems express a hope for the future and the possibility for cultural metamorphosis.

Genres: Poetry

102 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2011

Reviews

[Shivanee Ramlochan]

Excerpted from the full review:

"We lead complex, beautiful, many-dimensioned relationships with the Caribbean islands we inhabit. They require different masks, evolving responses to unpredictable seasons: whether we luxuriate in the heated thrust of Carnival, or mourn our murderous headlines, we, people of these particular islands, contain multitudes. This is one of the many gracefully-articulated messages woven into the fabric of Loretta Collins Klobah’s poems. At their forefront gleams the titular persona, the twelve foot neon woman, a resistance heroine, a glorious Madonna for the 21st century. She resonates with passion as much as she snarls in discontent, this unabashed Puertorriqueña, and in so doing she provides both anchor and platform for Klobah’s wondrously sung pieces.

Indeed, it is singing that comes first to mind as one allows this collection to simmer in the blood, registering the finely-wrought heat of its movements, the attention paid to dance and the rhythms many claim as indigenous to our shared shorelines. In “The BBC Does Bomba”, barrio children set themselves free to the persistent, encouraging tattoos pounded out on Modesto Cepeda’s barrel-drum, becoming receptacles of kinetic splendour.

“Girls raise the ruffled circle-skirt
to salute the drum, flick wrists
con fuerza until the butterfly skirts snap
por la derecha, por la izquierda,
the flower-print cotton
faldas swinging like machetes
over the harvest.”

Wrapped up in the flowing undulations of dances like these, the poet reminds us, are examinations that pierce, conducted by both foreign and local eyes."

You can continue reading my full review of The Twelve-Foot Neon Woman at Novel Niche.

[O]

Goodreads: Finished?
Me : Yeah I'm done.

DNF, or I skipped the ones I didn't like and just read the ones I seemed to like. Maybe I liked 5 or 6.

Trying to figure out why I'm not connecting to these and I think it's because they are broad or referencing things I'm uninterested in.

I'm not saying these aren't well written or that the subjects are unimportant, but I think it's just not for me right now.

I think in some coming years, I'll try again to read this, because right now it feels like a burden.

[Eden jartleu]

Having your lecturer explain to you what ‘pum-pum ’ means in the poems was an experience I didn’t expect.