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Ignatz
Ignatz takes the form of a cycle of love poems—in radical variations—based on Ignatz Mouse, the rodent anti-hero and love-object of George Herriman’s classic comic strip Krazy Kat. For decades, Krazy Kat rang the changes on a quirky theme of unrequited cat loves mouse; mouse hates cat; mouse hits cat with brick; cat mistakes brick for love; and so on, day after day. The backgrounds of the strip were in constant inexplicable a desiccated specimen of Arizona flora morphs in the next panel into a crescent moon, then into a snowcapped butte, while the characters chatted obliviously on, caught up in their own obsessive round. Moving through pacy, overflowing sentences, enigmatic aphoristic observations, and pointed imagistic vignettes, Youn’s second collection vividly captures the way the world reorients around an object of the certainty that your lover “will appear in the west, backlit by orange isinglass,” the ability to intuit a lover’s presence from the way “unseen flutes / keep whistling the curving phrases of your body.” Youn skillfully draws on the repeating narrative motifs and haunting landscapes of Krazy Kat as she tests and surpasses the limits of lyric to explore the cyclical elements of romanticized love. Youn speaks to and with her poetic forbears, whether St. John Perse, whose phrase “robed in the loveliest robe of the year” (T.S. Eliot’s translation) recurs in several love songs to Ignatz , or Geoffrey Hill, whose Mercian Hymns these poems recall in their serial structure and their commingling of the contemporary and classical. Ignatz is a poignant foray into the inventive possibilities of obsession and passion.
81 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
November 6, 2018
I read Ignatz and felt like I had gone through the various processes of being in a love just as toxic as it was intense and sensual. This is the first book I read by Monica Youn, and I was completely enraptured by her striking encapsulation of combustable, intense feelings in two seemingly simple, comical characters. Philosophical, sensual, and full of fire, the collection will stay with me as I navigate my own ghosts.
February 9, 2017
Mood-wise and thematically, reminded me of Anne Carson, in how the poems explore asymmetrical desire from the perspective of the one who loves more (i.e. the one without power). The book borrows its title from the comic Krazy Kat, in which Krazy is in love with the criminal mouse Ignatz, who is always throwing bricks at Krazy's head (which Krazy takes to be an expression of love - love is indifferent to the beloved's indifference).
There is a surreal interweaving of the animate and inanimate, conscious and unconscious, bodies and landscapes, starting from the first lines of the book: "A gauze bandage wraps the land/ and is unwound, stained orange with sulfates." (Ignatz Invoked) Love, in these poems, is something like a hallucination: "I would forget you were it not that unseen flutes/ keep whistling the curving phrases of your body" (Invisible Ignatz). Mundane things come alive with meaning, and everything points towards the beloved: "She thought to trace the seam of his jeans with her thumbnail.// The supersaturated blues were beginning to pixellate around the edges, to become a kind of grammar." (Ignatz Domesticus).
"There was something/ in his plea...// something that touched me," Youn writes in 'The Labors of Ignatz'. We don't have perspective on what moves us - it doesn't move us if we do. Love is commitment to this "something" that we don't have a name for. This could very well turn out to be a delusion, but rather than try to see through it, Youn's poems are determined to see it through to the end. So the book doesn't give any insight into what love is, but it carries the texture of being in love.
I thought this was a really great book and I think it'll get better upon rereading.
There is a surreal interweaving of the animate and inanimate, conscious and unconscious, bodies and landscapes, starting from the first lines of the book: "A gauze bandage wraps the land/ and is unwound, stained orange with sulfates." (Ignatz Invoked) Love, in these poems, is something like a hallucination: "I would forget you were it not that unseen flutes/ keep whistling the curving phrases of your body" (Invisible Ignatz). Mundane things come alive with meaning, and everything points towards the beloved: "She thought to trace the seam of his jeans with her thumbnail.// The supersaturated blues were beginning to pixellate around the edges, to become a kind of grammar." (Ignatz Domesticus).
"There was something/ in his plea...// something that touched me," Youn writes in 'The Labors of Ignatz'. We don't have perspective on what moves us - it doesn't move us if we do. Love is commitment to this "something" that we don't have a name for. This could very well turn out to be a delusion, but rather than try to see through it, Youn's poems are determined to see it through to the end. So the book doesn't give any insight into what love is, but it carries the texture of being in love.
I thought this was a really great book and I think it'll get better upon rereading.
April 15, 2025
I picked this up at random from a library display for poetry month and I'm glad I did. Youn takes a silly and frivolous early 1900s villainous comic book mouse and turns it into something pretty and substantial. This was weird and delightful and pretty. It was as random as my choosing it off the display.
January 29, 2011
My favorite poetry book of 2010. She nailed the way to be both luscious and spare at once. Using Herriman's Krazy Kat world as context allows for maximum play in minimum space. She can borrow the entire Ignatz apparatus to talk about something else altogether. It's not a world of narrative, or of meaning waiting to be unlocked. It's shadowlands.
Ignatz Oasis
When you have left me
the sky drains of color
like the skin
of a tightening fist.
The sun commences
its gold prowl
batting at tinsel streamers
on the electric fan.
Crouching I hide
in the coolness I stole
from the brass rods
of your bed.
Ignatz Oasis
When you have left me
the sky drains of color
like the skin
of a tightening fist.
The sun commences
its gold prowl
batting at tinsel streamers
on the electric fan.
Crouching I hide
in the coolness I stole
from the brass rods
of your bed.
December 23, 2015
This reminded me how much I love Herriman's comics. All of the poems had much to reveal about desire (and sometimes, the futility of desire), but my favorites also illuminated something about poetic form and style. Of these, "Landscape with Ignatz" and "X as a Function of Distance from Ignatz" stick with me for the way they use repetition to create implied narratives.
May 19, 2025
I think this book is a real feat. The poems are tight, stylishly crafted, smart, and full of sensuousness and feeling. Even when orchestrating more elusive figures or plots, the crisp phrases, lines, and forms thrill. It's interesting to read this book 15 years after its publication because I think the frames of the book--Ignatz, Krazy Kat, etc.--have really aged. As someone who didn't know about the comic strip, I found Ignatz a particularly frustrating figure, unsure of how his seeming assumption of Platonic passion and general villainousness mapped onto the relationship with the mostly unseen beloved. Youn's notes on the characters in the notes were refreshing when I got there, but I didn't think to start with the notes. No matter, it's a great book of poems.
February 13, 2024
Certainly Monica Youn is a skilled poet. The more impressive as she is also a practicing lawyer. This collection grew on me: from skeptical distance to recognition of something more than at first expected. I am still not sure if that something more is clinical or personal. By clinical I mean the various styles of writing are an exercise and the ideas merely detached philosophy. By personal I mean a presentation of experience and feelings so deeply held they can be expressed in any framework. Perhaps that distinction doesn't matter. In the end, I can appreciate but am not connected to this work.
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July 1, 2021love the premise. the first part draws a lot on the natural Arizonian landscape. the second part starts to stray away from the dry plains and more towards civilization, the third part ignatz become supernatural, the fourth part ignatz is in and out of jail. ignatz is very sexy and sensual in the first part (perhaps in accordance with all the nature imagery?), while to my eyes the rest of the book is more lovelorn and detached. overall the poems are short and cutting... as to be expected from monica youn, who is both a lawyer and a poet (😭)!
October 29, 2018
Heady poems inspired by a century-old comic strip character; that part blew my mind in a way that disturbed me, which was maybe the point. Comic Ignatz abuses Krazy Kat, who in turn loves him. It is a deep and disturbing metaphor that generates an ominous hum under poems of love, lust, or even traffic. I enjoy Youn's wordplay, her spare lines, her insight, her intellect.
October 17, 2019
Beautifully crafted and controlled. Inventive language and meditations on an object of desire... from the point of view of a whimsical cartoon. Didn't love it, but found much to admire in terms of language.
May 27, 2019
Reread this old favorite from the 1st psychic safari. Not as stirring as in Y2K, but still a keeper.
December 26, 2019
This book just was not for me. There were a couple of beautiful poems, but most of the poems did not interest me. The book felt like I were reading a poet hater's idea of what poetry is like.
October 26, 2020
“His bluenailed fingers fled into her mouth.” (p. 50)
July 20, 2022
(2.5)
January 26, 2023
Cool cool 6/10
February 8, 2025
Very brave and intriguing. I will surely never forget this extremely imaginative book.
April 6, 2011
monica youn is a for real poet. not like me where i string words together to affect meaning and hope for effect. landscape with ignatz is her proof:
Landscape with Ignatz
The rawhide thighs of the canyon straddling the knobbled blue spine of the sky.
The bone-spurred heels of the canyon prodding the gaunt blue ribs of the sky.
The sunburnt mouth of the canyon biting the swollen blue tongue of the sky.
The hangnailed fingers of the canyon snagging the tangled blue hair of the sky.
The blistered thumbs of the canyon tracing the blue-veined throat of the sky.
The sleep-crusted lids of the canyon blink open…your soft, your cerulean eye.
Landscape with Ignatz
The rawhide thighs of the canyon straddling the knobbled blue spine of the sky.
The bone-spurred heels of the canyon prodding the gaunt blue ribs of the sky.
The sunburnt mouth of the canyon biting the swollen blue tongue of the sky.
The hangnailed fingers of the canyon snagging the tangled blue hair of the sky.
The blistered thumbs of the canyon tracing the blue-veined throat of the sky.
The sleep-crusted lids of the canyon blink open…your soft, your cerulean eye.
May 20, 2011
All of the poems in this book propose to revolve around this Ignatz character, love interest of Krazy Kat. The language is interesting and makes good emotional use of imagery. When I finished, though, I found that I wished the poems were a little more concrete and narrative and gave us a little sharper picture of what this enigmatic relationship between Ignatz and Krazy Kat, which I believe is central to the premise of the book. Things can be stranger, they don't have to be consistent. I just wish I knew more. That criticism aside, there's a lot to like in these poems, and the book is a good read.
January 30, 2017
Clever concept--Monica Youn reinvents the villainous mouse Ignatz from the Krazy Kat comic strip, casting him in different lights. Each poem a frame, she experiments with structure, as the structure and length of each poem vary like the vantage point from which the speaker and reader engage with Ignatz. Having never read the comic strip, I could still appreciate the poems, for she speaks to a philosophy accessible beyond a grounded artifact.
May 12, 2012
I love Krazy Kat so I expected to love this, but it is a difficult love. Ha, as I should have expected. Mostly, I was lost. And surprised to find myself disinterested, until the last two poems, when I finally felt an impact (brick-like).
January 17, 2016
Although I preferred her first collection, Barter, this was another bold, unique collection of poetry playing with sound, form, and both the dark and light sides of love. Stunning and immensely readable.
November 2, 2010
Some of the poems are beautiful. I don't get the connection to Herriman. What a strange idea.
December 26, 2010
Original sparse poetry from a promising young poet.
April 11, 2011
I'm a little obsessed with this book. It's really really good--spare & funny & scary & beautiful.
March 9, 2012
loved these love song variations which risk sentimentality for emotion and go often for that old-timey beauty
...and because you always love the one that throws a brick at your head.
...and because you always love the one that throws a brick at your head.
November 23, 2014
Hints of Anne Carson at her most terse, and yet...not. I don't want another Anne Carson (there can only be one!) but I am searching for someone comparable. Probably a lost cause.
February 1, 2015
Loved it! I was not familiar with Krazy Kat before I stumbled across a few of these poems in Paris Review, but now I'm hooked on both Youn and KK.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews