READ & DESTROY
is proud to announce the publication
GEHENNA
by Ludovico De Medici
Gehenna can be ordered as an E-book (PDF) for $2.50 at http://stores.lulu.com/deadtrees
OR
You can order a hard copy of the book for $5.00 from
Read & Destroy Press P.O. Box 1572 Pleasant Valley, NY 12569
Send all online orders and inquiries to read.and.destroy@gmail.com
Read & Destroy Press P.O. Box 1572 Pleasant Valley, NY 12569
Send all online orders and inquiries to read.and.destroy@gmail.com
The Busiest Bard in the Underground
A Review of Justin Parrinello’s newest book of poems, Gehenna
Love his verbose paradoxical contortions of unusual wordplay
and literary grotesqueries or not
experimental poet
Justin Parrinello has definitely set the pace for the intriguing,
the bizarre and avant-garde all at rapid-fire speed.
Gehenna, the newest collection under his longstanding pseudonym Ludovico De Medici,
is the follow-up to the eulogistic melancholia of January’s
The Hair Falls Out in Clumps of Languages Long Dead
and
the radical progressive approach to automatic writing and word salad exhibited in May’s
Complete and Utter Rubbish Compiled with a Goal of Generating Cash.
Gehenna is a collection of seven poems narrated in the same cryptic, prophetic tone you’ve come to expect, only this time around Parrinello’s abandoned the concept driven narrative framework of which he’s well known and has instead
set a series of potent linguistic landmines that detonate with power and purpose
one after the other.
The author himself described Gehenna in a interview with
Ellen Connelly of the poetry zine
The Ephemera Exchange as
“A series of night gallery episodes that all have a sort of romantic paranoia in common. There‘s something for everyone, There’s bits about dead sea scrolls,
a crank-lab explosion, the sephira,
booster-shots of flavor-aid laced with cyanide,
and at least one love poem for good measure.”
The book begins with an interesting piece entitled Strawberry Cough,
which manages to frankenstein the historical account of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination with the squirmy, scaly imagery you’d find in a film by
David Lynch or Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Pieces like You are Dead, Because the Lord is not Your Armor and
Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid help to reinforce Parrinello’s atypical technique and ominous discourse with a slew of occult allusions, and a slapstick tenor of topics ranging from the Tylenol Murders, drug mules, religious excommunication, tales of love after life, and the end of civilization as we know it.
This book is edgy, thought-provoking, and literally bleeds with mood and style.
It packs a plentiful and at times unsettling punch, but by the end of the final poem
Let Them Eat Crack,
it all becomes very clear that this exercise in alienation, surveillance culture,
and loss of god has been the authors intention all along.
Once you’ve finished the book you’ll find yourself wanting to revisit the strange balance of utopian and dystopian imagery and clever language patterning Parrinello’s so artfully devised.
Go with your instincts, you’ll thank me in the long run!
Review by Brian Hill
of the Outsider Writers Collective
