• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
cartoon face 512 pixels wide

Koss Works

Writing | Poetry | Art

  • Home
  • About Koss
  • Books
    • Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect
  • Visual Art
    • Photographs
    • Poetry | Video | Experimental Works
  • Awards & Honors
  • Publications
    • Poetry & Hybrid
    • Anthologies
    • Fiction, Flash, and Microfiction
    • Creative Nonfiction
    • Features
    • Reviews, Interviews & Mentions
    • Art and Illustration
    • Visual Poetry & Asemic Art
    • Photography
  • What’s New
  • Creative Services
    • Web Design and Website Update Services
  • Blog
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Poetry Mini Reviews

Meg Tuite | White Van Review

October 30, 2022 ·

dark hallway in abandoned building black and white photo
Photo courtesy of Peter Scherbatykh (Unsplash)

White Van is an important, intense, must-read hybrid book by Meg Tuite. Part of me wants to dub it expressionistic, but the bones of me know it is really a stark, unflinching, representation of what is. Not an exaggeration by any means. Buy White Van here.

From GoodReads, Meg Tuite, White Van Review

In White Van, Tuite creates her own genre of darkness, of inescapable trauma drawn in vignettes that smear into a miasma of despair. Point of view shifts and blurs, creating a disembodied, dissociative vibe. The victim might be the writer/speaker, the girl living in the van with her dad, or a lone urban teenager. The perp might be an ambivalent writer god casting his eyes on horror with no inclination toward moral intervention. And without intervention, you the reader/god will behold in dis-ease, for this is no easy read, nor should any important book be “easy.” You, yourself could be both victim and perpetrator, enmeshed in the text which masterfully induces dislocation.

Sometimes Tuite’s writing resembles poetry, and sometimes prose-verging-on-story, but then it coagulates into an oppressive, immersive victim-feel experience. Don’t expect heroes, justice, or resolutions in this book, this is dark realism served with no apologies. The works read together more like a “state” than “chapters” or a “collection,” a state that shines a mirror on the vile misogyny and perversion of a sick society. An important, confrontational book by a complex, gifted mind not afraid to descend into the blackest recesses of female victim-ness while inventing her own mode of expression.

And in all the beautifully rendered Cimmerian shades, Tuite, at times, startles with some dark comic relief, such as “You have three kids, a husband, and an open-coffin vagina. Sister says it dies when you are eight.” If these lines don’t entice you to read White Van, nothing will.

Lannie Stabile | Poetry | Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus

June 17, 2021 ·

Looking forward to this new book by Lannie Stabile (a queer Michigan writer) called Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus from Cephalopress Books. It looks like an interesting blend of feminism and Greek mythology as seen through Lannie’s acute and personal lens. Will be updating this page once I have a copy in my hot hands to read. Oh, I can’t not mention I am blessed to have a Leda Cartoon in here too (thank you Lannie). More soon.

Lannie Stabile Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus Books
Lannie Stabile Good Morning to Everyone Except Dogs Who Name Their Dogs Zeus Books Now Available
Leda’s New Coat (Leda and the Swan)

Primary Sidebar

Feeling Social?

  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Featured Posts

woman on a trampoline with two kids watching and a windmill in the distance in black and white

Book Review Dancing Backwards Toward Pluperfect | Carla Sarett | Trampoline Poetry

purple background with white quote text from book review by erin vachon of Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect

Review of Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect by Erin Vachon

gray corn field with white text and excerpt from Kristine Esser Slentz interviewing Koss

Interview (RE) An Ideas Journal, Kristine Esser Slentz

Peeling paint in faded white with text for a book review

Book Review | Barton Smock | Kings of Train

graphic with red black and white shapes and quote from a book review for dancing backwards towards pluperfect.

Book Review: Heterodox Haiku by Jerome Berglund

earth tone aerial view with black and red promo text for book

Review | Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect in New Pages by Jami Macarty

field in monochrome with snow and dead corn stalks

Welcome to 2025 – Is Social Media Dead?

windmills with blue sky and orange and brown front with lavender promotional text for best small fictions 2025 nominees for Midway Journal.

Best Small Fictions 2025 | Midway Journal

rural landscape with promo text for interview all in earth tones, black and white

Interview | Anti-Heroin Chic | James Diaz

Pink background with black text and "wod" write or die logo with quote from an article interview

Interview – Write or Die Magazine – Katie Jean Shinkle – Koss

Categories

  • Anthologies
  • Art
  • Asemic Writing & Art
  • Book
  • Book Reviews
  • Contests and Awards
  • Design
  • Experimental Writing
  • Features
  • Flash
  • General
  • Interview
  • Micro Fiction
  • Photography
  • Poem
    • Abecedarian
    • Aubade
    • Ekphrastic Poetry
    • Erasure Poetry
    • List Poem
    • Poem Forms
    • Prose Poem
    • Queer Poetry
    • Video Poem
    • Visual Poetry
    • Zuihitsu
  • Poetry Mini Reviews
  • Poetry Podcast
  • Poetry Reading
  • Publications
  • Random Stuff
  • Uncategorized
  • Web Design Tips

Through the Body’s Bramble

https://koss-works.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Through-the-Bodys-Bramble.mp3

Archives

Let’s Connect on Social!

  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2025 Koss | Log in