London Grip Review’s Jack Skelley’s INTERSTELLAR THEME PARK

Interstellar Theme Park
Jack Skelley
BlazeVOX [books]
ISBN: 978-1-60964-411-6
204 pp $22.00

In a sense, Interstellar Theme Park is “Jack Skelley’s Greatest Hits,” a metaphor that especially works because so much of this book rocks and rolls through pop culture, dancing irreverently to the soundtrack of the last third of the twentieth century. New and Selected Writing is the subtitle. Think High Tide and Green Grass, the first Rolling Stones’ greatest hits compilation. The Stones loom large in section 7 of this collection, called “Rawk!”

Interstellar Theme Park is an apt title for this collection, suggesting not only the fantastical, absurd, surreal nature of the trip Skelley takes us on but the sheer comic fun and the constant bombardment of our attention in today’s online/on-air world. It is also the title of the very first poem in the book – in the “Planet of Toys” section. That poem reads like the rant of the unleashed id, almost every line beginning with “I want.”

I want quasi-suspended animation (genital arousal optional)
I want a planet of toys
I want a jihad of joys
And a gulag of Karens
I want Rimbaudian grammar police
I want Stormy Daniels balloon rides

And the list goes on: “I want Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd to levitate the Tomorrowland Terrace.”

Interstellar Theme Park consists of eight sections, sampling like a DJ from forty years of Skelley’s creative work. “Planet of Toys” channels scripture and the movies. “Product Placement” highlights the gaudy super-saturation of commercialized “product.” “Artificial Heart” continues to explore the incessant craving that motivates us (“You Make Everything Move Me” satirizes desire to the tune of the Troggs’ “Wild Thing.”) “Toxic Assets” delves into political culture, especially during the Reagan years. The poem, “Toxic Assets,” like “Interstellar Theme Park” and others, is constructed, mantra-like, around a repeated phrase – “It wasn’t.”

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