Olivia Cronk’s newest release, Womonster takes the form of two long poems. INTERRO-PORN and CHENILLE. With each exploring various facets of the self as it communicates with its composition and the minor selves contained within.
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The former half moving with abrasive texture, and the latter slowing into a dream-like flow. Moving deeper towards the interior. That abyssopelagic place in our heads.
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INTERRO-PORN is a poem of confrontation. Where the poet is under the gaze of the text, answering its questions, confessing their sins / crimes / fantasies.
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The title Womonster is very directly a portmanteau of woman and monster. But the role of the monster here is very much human. It equates to a kind of crudeness or unetiquette. A dismissal of stable forms and flows.
Body as a site of decadent filth
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At first it feels like the poet is confronting an adulterer, or questioning what they could have done to allow this to happen. Lines like, WHERE THE FUCK / WERE YOU. But I don’t think this is the correct framing.
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The interrogation is of the various players operating within the poet’s psyche. They dress themselves in different disguises. Drusilla, Griselda, Giselle. The names seemingly always arriving in this order.
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The dialogue or interactions between these identities is abrupt and prone to outbursts. A scene in lowercase is suddenly interrupted by a string of uppercase text. As if something has just been revealed. As if the interrogator has caught their suspect slipping up.
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But an ethereal distance exists between these subjects. Like they might be communicating through a ouija board, or a seance. Some occult ritual. They cannot see one another. They instead share a void. A set of disembodied voices intermingling.
WHAT ARE YOUR TRICKS? / CAN I STEAL THEM?
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As INTERRO-PORN progresses it begins to show signs of a theatrical or cinematic performance. With one of the voices potentially controlling the actions of the others. It feels as if we are following this director as they coordinate an unseen performance.
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I imagine any performance they make would look similar to Von Trier’s Dogville. With each actor having only a vague or shallow connection to their setting. Speaking into the stripped-down blackness. Reading a script transcribed from memory.
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Maybe the ethereality of Womonster is derived from this kind of memoryscape. Reading Cronk’s work feels like navigating an unconscious. Like the poet is recreating this interior for us to walk through / watch / interact with.
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Interrogation is a theater is a cinema
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The accusation is a performance. It comes after a certain narrative moment is triggered. The spectator watches adamantly. The confession is a release of air.
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But even an interrogation must flow a certain way. The poet’s role as director then makes sense here. As she directs the topography of the poem, expertly knowing when to bend it into confrontation and when to withdraw into explanation / backstory / calmness.
A vile dropping planet
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INTERRO-PORN ends with this kind of reorienting. Shifting towards a scene of miniatures. Which is the same place that the second poem, CHENILLE, begins.
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This forms an immediate connection between the two pieces. Where the directorial actions of INTERRO-PORN seem to turn around in CHENILLE, in order to reveal what performance we have been watching the construction of.
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Where the flow of INTERRO-PORN was textured and dynamic, CHENILLE is slower, more potently ethereal.
We devour will in its devour
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New names appear, old names return. Darius. Drusilla. Giselle. Etc. But their pronunciation is softer, less on edge. There is no accusation boiling under the surface waiting to be thudded onto the table.
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Here, the poet more fluidly moves between identities, testing each body’s different capabilities–the attributes of every persona.
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Both INTERRO-PORN and CHENILLE end with a list of influences. Ranging from Amy Winehouse’s aesthetic in FUCK ME PUMPS to Tan Lin’s ambient work to Shirley Jackson’s horror writing. This list functions as an index for Cronk’s work. As if we might back ray trace certain lines to their compatible sources.
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The revealing of these influences becomes a release–a form of retroactive ekphrasis.
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But can a work be ekphrastic of multiple sources? Can it collage these works together into an amalgamation? The poetic suture-body.
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Cronk’s ekphrasis is purposefully crude and messy. She does not attempt to deeply explore each individual work, but instead to mine their surfaces. Accumulating attributes from each piece of art that she encounters, learning how to repurpose it into a facet of her own.
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This then forms a collage of many ekphrastic moments in a largely non-ekphrastic piece.
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INTERRO-PORN and CHENILLE both reveal everything that has informed their creation / composition.
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An idea is a work of art. Everything gained must be accounted for. Must be noted and acknowledged.
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Womonster at times feels like a literal body of work. As if it is somehow tethered to a human anatomy (the muscle memory of a body somewhere). I’m not sure if it’s the poet’s or potentially the poem itself. But even in the deeply ethereal settings of the text, there is always this return to the visceral.
And I was living inside F Scott Fitzgerald
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The flesh is projected into the foggy / obscured space of the poem. It becomes another object to be manipulated by the authorial voice. Something to once again be directed and examined–at times interrogated.
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The page becomes a void on which the self can be isolated and dissected.
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Olivia Cronk expertly maps this enigmatic interior space. Translating into utterance the esoteric dialogues of the unconscious / unspoken.
Mike Corrao is the author of two novels, MAN, OH MAN (Orson’s Publishing) and GUT TEXT (11:11 Press); one book of poetry, TWO NOVELS (Orson’s Publishing); two plays, SMUT-MAKER (Inside the Castle) and ANDROMEDUSA (Forthcoming – Plays Inverse); and two chapbooks, AVIAN FUNERAL MARCH (Self-Fuck) and SPELUNKER (Schism – Neuronics). Along with earning multiple Best of the Net nominations, Mike’s work has been featured in publications such as 3:AM, Collagist, Always Crashing, and The Portland Review. He lives in Minneapolis. @ShmikeShmorrao