Decline of the Animal Kingdom
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Decline of the Animal Kingdom investigates modern constructs of domesticity, freedom, wilderness, and artificiality to paint a portrait of what it means to be human, animal, or both in a society saturated with dog boutiques, trophy hunting, retro taxidermy, and eco-tourism. With brief forays into Algonquin Park and the heart of the 1980s jungle, the book largely draws its energy from the urban landscape, where the animals that interact with the environment have permanent effects on the land and human psyche. A wild deer wanders into the downtown core; the Galapagos and the ethics of conservation invade our Xbox; a mule grows weary of his unrewarding office job and unfulfilling relationships. Exploring the victories and defeats of an urban existence complete with 9-5 office angst, the claustrophobia of domestic partnerships in bachelor apartments, and party-and-pick-up culture, Decline of the Animal Kingdom is Laura Clarke’s love letter to the city of Toronto, and to extinct animals and office misfits alike.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Clarke's mischievous, fabulist debut collection blurs the lines between the literal and allegorical as she employs a lens of anthropomorphism, an edge of misanthropy, and the slow unravelling of personae into disparate states evoking something between grace and madness. The stark, spare language of her poetry, which utilizes a variety of forms, belies its complexity. Layers within layers peel back in slow, substantial folds. Such layering is recognizably at work in the dissolution of the self into animal association, as in "Materials for a Memoir on Animal Locomotion," "Extinction," and "Carnivora." It is also at work in the ongoing absurdist narratives of anthropomorphized behavior among office drones. The layering grows deeper and more intricate as the book freewheels through themes of growth, birth, and decay, all dissecting an ever-present duality of the fear of becoming and the embracing of the dissection itself. There is a rather vicious sense of play, which is clear from her poems' titles, including "If I Were a Killer Whale," "Self-Evaluation for Employee #M100656984," and "Decoherence." Clarke's successful balancing of calculated loathing and euphoria makes for a fierce piece of performance art.
