Vertigo & Ghost
Poems
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
Named a Most Anticipated Book of Spring 2021 by Publishers Weekly
Winner of the 2019 Forward and Roehampton Prizes, Vertigo & Ghost offers a searing reimagining of Greek myths of sexual violence that crackles with rage, energy, and empathy.
Beginning with a poem about the teenage dawning of sexuality, Vertigo & Ghost pitches quickly into a fierce, electrifying, riveting sequence that exposes Zeus as a serial rapist, for whom women are prey and sex is weaponized. As unflinching, devastating poems of vulnerability and anger confront Zeus with aggressions both personal and historical, his house comes crumbling down. In its place, acclaimed poet Fiona Benson reveals a disturbing contemporary world in which violent acts against women continue to be perpetrated on a daily, even hourly, basis.
In the volume’s second half, Benson shifts to an intimate and lyrical document of depression and family life. These moving poems probe the ambivalent terrain of early motherhood—its anxieties and claustrophobias as well as its gifts of tenderness and love—reclaiming the sanctuary of domestic private life and the right to raise children in peace and safety. Together, these two halves form a complex portrait of modern womanhood.
Dynamic in its range and risk, Vertigo & Ghost introduces an important British voice to an American audience, a voice that speaks out with clarity, grace, and bravery against abuse of power.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her gorgeously visceral second collection, Benson (Bright Travellers) explores misogynist violence through the lens of myth, bringing Zeus into the present day as a serial rapist and abuser. Those familiar with Greek mythology will recall the god's penchant for questionable sexual behavior, disguising himself as a swan to seduce Leda, for example. In one poem, Zeus appears before a judge and receives a "light sentence" because he is "an exemplary member/ of the swimming squad." In another, his victim addresses him with vitriol, declaring her intentions for vengeance: "to out you/ Zeus, to drive you through the streets, with/ songs that find a name for you at last,/ you filthy pimp, you animal, you rapist." The second half of the collection is more overtly personal, as the poet reflects on experiences with childbirth, motherhood, and mental health. There is chaotic beauty throughout, particularly in her physical descriptions of how the human body becomes more animal while giving birth. In "Wildebeest," she writes: "I submitted to my body's/ wild stampede/ to deliver you safe/ to the other side// and I was both the flood/ and the furious corral/ from which you were expelled." This is a fiercely feminist articulation of rage and reckoning.
