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Panic
Through portraits painted in a muted palette, Panic embraces the ratcheting music of grief. Laura McCullough strives to uncover secrets beneath the platitudinal. Her narrative lyrics juxtapose private and public despair, portraying isolated stoicism against the backdrop of rippling disorder.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 24, 2011
A Seer Speaks
Laura McCullough is a poet who continues to explore situations and emotions unavailable to others - subsurface fears, frustrations, moments of doubt that arise only out of living a life that crosses forbidden accepted borders. She has that uncanny ability to shave terror and fear into moments that are tangent to a bizarre humor, seemingly finding the human comedy that so often is masked by a brittle black surface of incidental reality. In PANIC McCullough finds incidents of disaster in the most mundane and unexpected places - drownings, accidents, bruised emotions, animal (and reminding us that humans are animals!) activities that are masked by passive observers who may not notice the colossal but transient moments of tragedy. How she finds these occult forces and molds them into such perfect poetic measures is the conundrum of what makes her a great poet. Presenting an example of her talent is a challenge, but the following measures her subtlety well:
LIKE CRAWLING THROUGH A FIRE
IN the comix shop,
she contemplates another tattoo,
one that might memorialize what she's come to know as truth.
It's her own beauty coming on
after so long thinking she was ugly -
how the sunburst around her belly
made her fell luminous until the winter,
how the small snake coiled around her thumb
scared off the encroaching lack of empowerment
only until she saw someone on the boardwalk
with the exact same thing.
Now she considers womanhood
and how maybe tattooed make-up - lips and eyeliner -
would free her form the morning ritual
of a magnifying mirror.
She tells her boyfriend this
as he breaks the spines of a new Manga.
His low slung pants look transitory.
His pocket hangs open, and she puts her hand in.
The smile he gives her is like oxygen in a smoky room.
She closes her eyes and tries to breathe.
A mild poem on the surface perhaps, until the machinations of what is happening in the girl's brain surface with time. This is only a brief poem of the many far more astringent experiences McCullough offers. This is poetry making of the highest order.
Grady Harp
Laura McCullough is a poet who continues to explore situations and emotions unavailable to others - subsurface fears, frustrations, moments of doubt that arise only out of living a life that crosses forbidden accepted borders. She has that uncanny ability to shave terror and fear into moments that are tangent to a bizarre humor, seemingly finding the human comedy that so often is masked by a brittle black surface of incidental reality. In PANIC McCullough finds incidents of disaster in the most mundane and unexpected places - drownings, accidents, bruised emotions, animal (and reminding us that humans are animals!) activities that are masked by passive observers who may not notice the colossal but transient moments of tragedy. How she finds these occult forces and molds them into such perfect poetic measures is the conundrum of what makes her a great poet. Presenting an example of her talent is a challenge, but the following measures her subtlety well:
LIKE CRAWLING THROUGH A FIRE
IN the comix shop,
she contemplates another tattoo,
one that might memorialize what she's come to know as truth.
It's her own beauty coming on
after so long thinking she was ugly -
how the sunburst around her belly
made her fell luminous until the winter,
how the small snake coiled around her thumb
scared off the encroaching lack of empowerment
only until she saw someone on the boardwalk
with the exact same thing.
Now she considers womanhood
and how maybe tattooed make-up - lips and eyeliner -
would free her form the morning ritual
of a magnifying mirror.
She tells her boyfriend this
as he breaks the spines of a new Manga.
His low slung pants look transitory.
His pocket hangs open, and she puts her hand in.
The smile he gives her is like oxygen in a smoky room.
She closes her eyes and tries to breathe.
A mild poem on the surface perhaps, until the machinations of what is happening in the girl's brain surface with time. This is only a brief poem of the many far more astringent experiences McCullough offers. This is poetry making of the highest order.
Grady Harp
October 12, 2011
Panic by Laura McCullough is an interesting, yet great read. What seems to appear as a collection of mismatched poetry, culminates into a beautiful narration of a tragic loss. Each and every poem stands by itself, however, when in placement with one another, they forge a deep set tale, which invokes feelings and awe. Panic is the first book of poetry that I have ever read. Reading through its pages I have found a content place within poetry, and now aspire to read other collections of poetry.
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April 24, 2013
I was just wondering if it would be too intense to write a collection of poetry where each poem is a tragedy, when I found this one. I had to step away a few times--it did make me tense--and it also had some moments of great storytelling. Good pace.
August 4, 2011
I reviewed this book in The Blood Lotus Journal.
February 16, 2012
This is an absolutely lovely book book of poems: on a line-by-line level, this book made me keep reading, and kept surprising me with its language, with its poetry and with its heart.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews