Dog Girl

Heidi Lynn Staples

Reviews of the book.

 

“Staples’s sophomore collection is informed in equal measure by traditional English balladry and post-modern literature. Her taut lyrics reimagine the English language, pulling multiple meanings out of word-sounds, à la Paul Muldoon at his most nonsensical: I wracked my refrain, that blousy souse.// I was bard. I was crazed.// I was dog girl’s shame.// So, I culled my maim. Throughout these lyrics, prose poems and language sprays, Staples tempers her avant-garde tendencies with a folksy sentimentality. Though every commonplace trope and cliche is worried, torqued and tweaked—damsel in undress, I feels sad tonight, I wore my best address—the everyday matters of housekeeping, childbirth, marriage, sex and death are ever present. Occasionally the whimsy feels forced (an uber tuber super dooper doplar radar) but in her finer moments, Staples’s poems can be truly singular: leaves at full-tilt trillingly / a tremble is a hymn / ‘I’ a humble thrum’s fable.” —Publisher’s Weekly

 

“‘I was barn. I was razed.’ No single line better captures the dizzying language-play and shifting authorial identities of Heidi Lynn Staples’ second collection. . . . The driving force behind the best of these poems, together with their insistence on pushing language to its limits, is the poet's underlying awareness that they are engaged in language-play: they are written to be enjoyed. I could never really curl up in the armchair and while away an afternoon with Tender Buttons, because it is essentially a manifesto. By contrast, Staples is clearly uninterested in staking claims. Dog Girl speaks in a voice of welcome, most audibly in ‘Februallad’ and 'Reddening Devout of the House.’ The verbal acrobatics are challenging and intense, but they seek to pull us in instead of push us away.” —Michael Ladd, from his review in West Branch

 

“Dog Girl growls, grumbles, yippees and pouts all in the same breath. Heidi Lynn Staples’ newest collection swells and weaves, pounces and pinwheels. It is a plentiful package busting at the rhymes and merry at the seams.Staples brings it sassily: ‘ . . . I think that this woman is a struggling hopeful’ (65). . . . Through the gamut from glee to tragedy, formal forms collide with months and do handstands. We are handed an obscure calendar complete with ‘Janimerick,’ ‘Februallad,’ ‘Maiku’ and ‘Novekphrasis.’ ‘Octanka’ is dotted with slashes, inverted V’s, and asterisks to assemble birds, snowflakes, rain and wind. The poem is a space where a ‘flaming mind at the crown wings’ (39) meets the ‘wet sweets slicker streets’ (41). Staples transforms again and becomes a grim Grimm sister in ‘Junquain:’ ‘the house/its tv blares/far from friends and family/mother who cut her child into/quarters’ (18). . . . Dog Girl is a slurred doggerel. It is burlesque. Styled, but comical Staples crafts keenly. She is super-phonic. The book ends appropriately, ‘O please, she said, don’t stop . . . . ’  ”—from the review by Heather Sweeney in Cutbank

 

“She isn’t against tackling the abstract and nailing it down with emotion, pinning ‘beauty’ up and pointing out the silliness of it, yet all the while backing an eternal desire for the nature these notions are built to entertain. She runs her own show and delights in doing so . . . . Sound is her forte. Some readers may think of Stein or find it overly cutesy. These anonymous are encouraged to read the book twice through at least, and then some. Staples piles weight into her measure. Listen for awhile and get yourself some.

FEBRUALLAD

o yes, i have strummed love
flung lit spin and shout, bright clasped rain
yes, my favor friend a true-love
and none day we’ll be fright as lain.

o once up in a spree, eyes met a true-love
i gasped him if i may
behold beheld become opposite of grave
o met was a whole nude day.

he spelt with me attention, fold me up
and dawn, he’s how i burnt thru speak
my fond, o before wife looked so grave
now he of he’ll not let life sleep. . . .

“There’s aplenty in DOG GIRL to return to. Staples brings out a collection that tackles head on what it is a book of poems should be and do, insisting that each page be ready to stand up and be reckoned with. The only slight bits here (often colored so by title choice) are but seemingly so.

JANIMERICK

There once was a white with a mouth
And a caul with a north for a south
The cold snapped err its ice
White as laboratory mice—
A quiet thrall bid a sprout broken

“This is a calendar of talent. There’s little leftover to be asked of it.” —from the review by Patrick James Dunagan in Galatea Resurrects

 

“Many poems in the book garner their titles from the names of poetic forms spliced with months of the year, e.g. ‘Februallad’ for February and ballad. Several poems in this book are ekphrastic poems inspired by the Japanese photographer Kanako Sasaki whose photographs feature a lone young woman engaged in slightly subversive behavior. Throughout, Staples addresses themes such as sex, marriage, pregnancy, and miscarriage with the same jubilant wordplay. In ‘Margic,’ a [lyric] prose poem, she splices together the language of grammatical rules with the language of lust: ‘a come pound me subject me, a come pound me prettily, a come pound me sex instance, and a come pound me come sex me sex instance.’ . . . If sex and relationships are ordinary and commonplace, then the way Staples makes them unordinary is through linguistic excesses and ever-multiplying plays on words.” —Rain Taxi online