By: Katrina Penaflor Managing Editor
Where to begin? Well, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure, as I’ve never reviewed anentire book of poetry before. But I guess I’ll start with “Dirty Pretty Things” was very good. Fair start?
Now on to actual details, to let people know what in the world I read and why anyone else should care to read it.
The author of the collection is Michael Faudet. I first discovered Faudet’s writing on Tumblr while scrolling through my feed.
I had never read anything of his before and his poem “A Question for Anna” caught my attention. It was only one line long, so perhaps it still falls under the category of prose.
It read, “Do you know what a palindrome is Madam?”
I couldn’t decipher what it was about this line that caught my attention, but I think it had to do with how clever it was. Madam, obviously falling under an example of a palindrome, completing the cheeky joke.
From there I kept reading Faudet’s work on his blog and eventually received “Dirty Pretty Things” for Christmas.
Let’s start with the introduction, which was interesting and odd in all the best ways. Instead of a regular run of the mill insight on the work of the author, the intro talked about the book “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
The importance of this was to describe the significance of the story to Faudet and his girlfriend and poet Lang Leav, who wrote the introduction. I enjoyed this candid insight to the relationship of the two writers because it laid the groundwork for possible inspirations behind the fantastical and dream-like voice the author has.
A majority of the poetry and writing is quite short, sometimes two or three lines long and nothing over four pages.
The reoccurring theme of Faudet’s writing is the overwhelming array of emotions that occur when one falls in love.
From the initial sexual interest, to the heartbreaking realizations of loving someone who doesn’t love you back, “Dirty Pretty Things” gives an honest look into the mind of a male speaker who is completely enthralled by his female muse.
A strong point for me was Faudet’s daring attempt at expressing characters’ sexual encounters with one another. He wrote with such whimsy, that the eroticism of it all nearly came across as some kind of dream. With characters dancing from bed to bed with nothing to worry about but his or her pleasure.
The only downside to this was at times the overuse of the words “fu*king” and “panties,” and “sex” tended to drag the writing down, and left a tackiness to some of the later poems.
I wouldn’t say this book is for everyone, as it often teeters back and forth from erotic to tooth-achingly sweet. I also could have done without the clichéd rhyming that occasionally popped up, and a few of the poems were just too short for me to pull meaning from.
But if looking at the work as a whole, I think Faudet created a clever and unique look at modern love. I appreciated his portrayal of characters who didn’t shy away from their sexual desires, and weren’t afraid to openly cry tears of joy and pain.
In addition, the way the words on the page were displayed visually were quite beautiful. I would absolutely read Faudet’s writing in the future, and would be interested in reading Lang Leav’s as she has spoken of her writing being inspired by Faudet.
