Chimeric Machines
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
This collection from rising author Lucy A. Snyder offers three dozen poems to delight readers who enjoy sly wordplay and subtle allusion, high intelligence and fierce heart.
Winner of the 2009 Bram Stoker Award: Superior Achievement in Poetry
Lucy A. Snyder
LUCY A. SNYDER is the five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of 15 books and over 100 published short stories. Her most recent titles are the collections Halloween Season and Exposed Nerves. She lives near Columbus, Ohio with a jungle of plants and an assortment of pet cats, crustaceans, fish, and turtles. You can learn more about her at lucysnyder.com and you can follow her on Twitter at @LucyASnyder.
Read more from Lucy A. Snyder
Installing Linux on a Dead Badger Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Soft Apocalypses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Halloween Season Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While the Black Stars Burn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Garden of Eldritch Delights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sparks and Shadows Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer's Survival Guide Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to Chimeric Machines
Related ebooks
Malinae Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsApostles of the Weird Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Tea and Other Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShadows & Tall Trees 7 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In Darkness Waiting Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I Am Your Brother Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Horrible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Issue 22: The Dark, #22 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Town: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Velroy and the Madischie Mafia: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ghastling: Book Nine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWeird Horror #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBodies Full of Burning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black Static #78/#79 Double Issue (Spring 2021) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Static #59 (July-August 2017) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExcerpts from a Film (1942-1987): A Tor.com Original Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Morpheus Tales: The Best Weird Fiction Volume 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNightmare Magazine, Issue 89 (February 2020): Nightmare Magazine, #89 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMorfius Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Static #77 (November-December 2020) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUneasy Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsScummer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Nightmare Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDoorways to the Deadeye Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Campfire Cult Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlubber Island Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMothlight Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Underland Arcana 1: Underland Arcana, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Wish I Was Like You Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Poetry For You
Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLeaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for Chimeric Machines
5 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I am a writer so I love words and this book of poetry shows Snyder's complete understanding of the words she will use to create an impact and a story telling full of imagery. I read the entire work and re-read a few since I received this book in October. It is delicious and I recommend this book to all lovers of words put together smartly and breath-taking poetry.
Book preview
Chimeric Machines - Lucy A. Snyder
Introduction
by Tom Piccirilli
Okay, so you've picked up this collection, which already proves that you're sharper than the kid you sat behind in Homeroom who used to spit in his textbooks, your step-brother George who used to call you bookworm
and thumb your glasses, and the automotive shop teacher who caught you with Leaves of Grass in the tenth grade and told you that poetry is just namby-pamby rhymes about rocks and rivers.
You, pal, have a head on your shoulders, and you're eager to dip deeply into Lucy Snyder's verse and prose poems. You've laid out your hard-earned cash and you're expecting good things. And I'm here to tell you that it was a smart move on your part because you're about to receive. You surely are.
Let me show you what I'm talking about. Perk up in your LA-Z-BOY for a second and just listen to this for a title: And There in the Machine, Virginia Finally Stood Up.
Now, is that a hook or is that a hook? It's impossible for anybody with two functioning brain synapses not to immediately have their imagination fired up the moment your eyes rest on those words. Snyder knows that the first hurdle between a writer and reader is the title. It's not the first scene or the first paragraph or even the first sentence. It's the title, and she's going to grab you by the guts early.
And if there's the faintest echo of that auto shop teacher or your goddamn brother George still wafting around at the back your skull telling you that maybe you've stumbled upon a Susan Polis Schultz wannabe, and you're worried that those rhyming couplets are going to sneak out from behind the next page, then check out these pitch-perfect, hammer-hard lines from Subtlety
:
Subtlety came to us from Latin
(by way of the clever French)
in that thin, gossamer term
subtilis, which in turn
is a web of under-stitched
subtext. What joe really gives
a flying doublefudge fuck
about lacy coy underwords?
Go ahead and read it again. I'll wait.
All set?
Snyder's work is complex yet grounded. You can read it on several levels and it'll work on each and every one. It's lyrical but rooted in authenticity and validity. There's truth here, and tackling the truth is the highest calling of any poet.
So many amazing lines just leap out at the reader, like this one from After the Funeral
: Mom's a brick of ash in a Baptist wall/and the nest I made stayed empty.
Doesn't that slip a knife between your ribs and tickle your heart?
That's