Cracked allure of concussive gore (The age of Vicissitude)



One might call Juliet Cook a confessional poet. Her subject of the self - as a female artist in an ever more turbulent society - has long been the connective tissue of her poetry. I came across Juliet in the early 2000s by way of a now defunct blog site we both poured our lived and imagined experiences on to. I loved both her poetry and her intensely honest meanderings around notions of corporeality, phobias, sex, doll parts, baked goods. Hers was a blog that opened up about the experiences of a woman in a body. Of the mind in the body of a woman. And Cook continues to deliver in this new collection of 13 poems.

I was only supposed to scream inside
my own one-eyed head.
I was only supposed to bleed in my own bed
after they got what they wanted
(Relax)

I probably feel like I know Cook better than I actually do, in the way we all feel a little bit closer to complete strangers on social media. Thanks to the author's poetry and blog entries, I have read snippets over the years of certain life events, relationships, pets, her place in the world of art and publishing. Her own Blood Pudding Press has published many poetry chapbooks over the years. Cook is a champion of poets as much as a writer of poetry. And I know that a few years ago, in her thirties, she suffered a stroke that affected her ability to plumb the depths of her lexicon for a while. A devastating blow for a lover of words. But one that she tipped on its head and eventually poured over the page in images of damaged brains and obstructed thoughts.

Damaged root systems
clog every drain. Not enough liquid
for my roasted duck feather brain's
plucked neurons.
(Disabled Cook Resigns)
 
These are almost poems within poems, circling concentrically. Take, for instance, 'Severed Into Unspeakable Compliance' which details the historic act of lobotomising female patients in mental institutions in order to pacify them. In the poem, these institutionalised women, raped by the staff who were supposed to protect them, are lobotomised to stop them complaining and accusing. Images that circle through Cook's own neurological condition, the words that failed to flow, sited bodily as blood that pours forth from gaping mouths, and choking goose feathers stuffed in the throat. Here, "mental stupor is better/than mental disorder" because a tranquil woman does not defy. She obeys. Her youth is her use as a sex object. But circle back to 'The age of Vicissitude' where youth ripens to maturity and Cook reveals the invisibility hex of middle age, of being bound and hidden from view.

Then tied me up in the hog garden
covered with manure to improve
my ongoing dry spell
(The age of Vicissitude)

The dry spell here might suggest writer's block, an obstruction of language. Or it might speak of the libido, or of the menopausal body. Elsewhere in the book birds' eggs, branches, and nests are rife, but this is not the imagery of a spring renewal. The eggs are cracked, the nests broken, the branches rotten. Through images of arrested development instead of regeneration, Cook highlights the expectations of motherhood, the choice between biological and intellectual creativity that many female artists are expected to make.

The poems in Blue Stingers Instead of Wings are not the confessional poetry of Sexton or Plath. Cook's confessions are horrific contortions, the blood and shit and metamorphosis of otherness, of disturbed mind over decaying matter. Here, imagined fears, like decapitation by ceiling fan, and disrupted brain flow imagery are scattered throughout, alongside the very real issues of misogyny and beauty, and the invisibility that comes with feminine maturation.