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Vanderhooft, JoSelle, 2007, The Minotaur's Last Letter To His Mother, 60 p., saddle stitched with glossy card-stock cover, 18 poems (5 new), cover painting and a few B&W interiors by Marge Simon, Ash Phoenix Books, $8.95.
"Minotaur" is myth retold and re-examined, myth invented, and folktales transformed into myth. In the title poem, the Minotaur tries to explain both himself and his mother, to her. Vanderhooft dissects this rather unpleasant myth and finds that it's rather more unpleasant than we thought at first. I did feel sorry for this creature who could never have been allowed to live his own life in Minoan Crete. Actually, that would be impossible today, although he would be imprisoned in a different kind of labyrinth. Vanderhooft turns this legend on its head a couple of different ways. She makes us see the story from the monster's side (and is he really the monster anyway?) and we're forced to consider motivations and implications of behavior that we suddenly see as requiring justification as sensible. You can't just plug in the monster and let the story run its course. We have to know why people do things. When the story was a myth we did not necessarily expect the characters to behave like human beings, but now we have to look them in the eye.
The book forces us to re-examine some other myths. Pluto is not a god anymore:
"Let them
draw up their contracts,
realign their charts,
downgrade him from a planet to a stone."
Here, dryads become more than we have known. There is a lot more to making a tree than you might think:
"Her palms, stronger than time, pressed the seed like clay
fresh from the wheel, while she, laughing, sang
the chorus that would guide it through the air
until it flowered"
When a dryad is evicted by the axe, worlds die.
There are myths here about anorexia, the Sphinx, the Kraken, Jesus and Mary, Snow White, and many more. And after all the death of a dryad or of a man bull is not the most harrowing of these.
The book looks very nice, and I really like Marge Simon's cover illustration, but I can hardly believe the publisher neglected to put any contact information on the book. It doesn't do any good to publish a book, IF YOU DON'T TELL ANYONE how to reach you! Okay, maybe the Strangelove reference isn't working, especially because a brief search of the Internet reveals that Ash Phoenix Books is an imprint of Gromagon Press (http://www.gromagonpress.com/), and now you know where to go to buy a copy.
"Minotaur" is myth retold and re-examined, myth invented, and folktales transformed into myth. In the title poem, the Minotaur tries to explain both himself and his mother, to her. Vanderhooft dissects this rather unpleasant myth and finds that it's rather more unpleasant than we thought at first. I did feel sorry for this creature who could never have been allowed to live his own life in Minoan Crete. Actually, that would be impossible today, although he would be imprisoned in a different kind of labyrinth. Vanderhooft turns this legend on its head a couple of different ways. She makes us see the story from the monster's side (and is he really the monster anyway?) and we're forced to consider motivations and implications of behavior that we suddenly see as requiring justification as sensible. You can't just plug in the monster and let the story run its course. We have to know why people do things. When the story was a myth we did not necessarily expect the characters to behave like human beings, but now we have to look them in the eye.
The book forces us to re-examine some other myths. Pluto is not a god anymore:
"Let them
draw up their contracts,
realign their charts,
downgrade him from a planet to a stone."
Here, dryads become more than we have known. There is a lot more to making a tree than you might think:
"Her palms, stronger than time, pressed the seed like clay
fresh from the wheel, while she, laughing, sang
the chorus that would guide it through the air
until it flowered"
When a dryad is evicted by the axe, worlds die.
There are myths here about anorexia, the Sphinx, the Kraken, Jesus and Mary, Snow White, and many more. And after all the death of a dryad or of a man bull is not the most harrowing of these.
The book looks very nice, and I really like Marge Simon's cover illustration, but I can hardly believe the publisher neglected to put any contact information on the book. It doesn't do any good to publish a book, IF YOU DON'T TELL ANYONE how to reach you! Okay, maybe the Strangelove reference isn't working, especially because a brief search of the Internet reveals that Ash Phoenix Books is an imprint of Gromagon Press (http://www.gromagonpress.com/), and now you know where to go to buy a copy.
