i wear a figleaf over my penis by Geoffrey Gatza

Not many have reviewed this item, but recently I found myself taking it off the shelf and diving into it with a full heart. Maybe the title puts people off, but if you can overlook its, what would you say, purposeful gaucherie, I think you might find a lot of substance in what Geoffrey Gatza has to say, and just as importantly, you will be moved and impressed by the ways he’s come up with for saying it all.

If i could find the words to describe what’s happening in FIGLEAF on a page by page basis I might have an inkling of how to communicate to you what is so appealing about Gatza’s work. On a poem by poem level, some of the poems rock, some of them lack a little something; I think maybe he works best when you take him in long stretches and let him make a run for it. I’ll begin with what might be the simplest poem in the book, “I Am.” It comes rather late, for it’s the kind of “broad statement” piece that MFA programs, seeking to impose order on the chaotic manuscripts of students, would advise being placed first. Or maybe last–the feeling one gets of wanting everything summed up. Plus “I Am” has the great virtue of being a list poem, the sort of process-based work we can most easily “grok.” A pride of lions, a covey of partridges, a parliament of owls: we have all been awed and dazzled by the poetic words the medieval taxonomists used to describe groups of animals. “I Am” builds on these, and less common ones, who knows, perhaps some of them were invented by GG for the purpose, but it might well be that all of these phrases are “real.” Then they’re sprayed down the page in alphabetical order, to get even more procedural, but just as you might encounter them in your average abecedarian bestiary: “Kindle of kittens/ / Knot of toads/ Leap of leopards/ Mob of kangaroos/ Murder of crows/ Ostentation of peacocks” etc. The whole thing jumps out at you as a unit, and yet by virtue the context of the section it appears in, it’s more than just a “rose Why Did You Get So Red” setpiece, it has an ethical and sociopolitical dimension.

There’s a lot of humor in the book, a lot of anger, some silly crazy Oulipo style nonsense, and some honestly felt emotional ballast. If one could compare a book of poems to a ship, this one has a hull filled with heavy cargo that sometimes shifts as the equator moves around deep waters. And so much concern for the animals, the lowliest species get their share of respect. It is the first book I’ve read, for example, that alludes to the “terror attack” on Siegfried and Roy by their tigers and lions, in terms of deepest sympathy for the big cats for whom the worm finally turned.

And the book begins and ends with a novel in miniature! The only thing I had some problems with was the intermittent Chinoiserie, I guess you’d call it, of some of the poems that depend on cute sort of translations of old Chinese myths–one character called “Wee Ping,” for example, and lots of old woodcut illustrations of dragons eating their own tails for purposes of pictorial symmetry and elegance. But if I complained about every book that contained something I could live with out I’d be like a male version of Xanthippe.

— Kevin Killian

This book is part of our moblis in mobli series, a free ebook with a printed books that is for sale from us as well as Amazon.com.

buy a copy from Amazon 

Mobilis in Mobili; “moving in a moving thing”; the motto of Captain Nemo and his crew aboard the submarine, Nautilus in Jules Verne’s, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The phrase also translates to, changing through the changing medium, which is very appropriate for this poetry series. These titles are available in two formats, a free downloadable Adobe PDF ebook as well as available for sale in a print-on-demand book. Each is a fine quality text, which you have come to expect from BlazeVOX [books] We only hope you take will take a moment and read these works in whichever format you feel most comfortable.

Our goal in this series to have our poetry read, read by you, and again I ask for your time, quality reading time, which is more valuable than money these days. I ask you for moments in your life and imaginations and open these books and page through freely and spend a moment with these wonderful author in a realm where they can spread out and show the quality of their writing in a format appropriate to their merits.

To find out about new titles added to our inventory please check out our blog. Enjoy and thank you for visiting.

I Wear a Fig Leaf Over My Penis by Geoffrey Gatza Book Preview