Terese Svoboda

Pirate Talk or Mermalade

alicia — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

I liked most things about this book. My childlike love for pirates and mermaids created my bias for the title. Using an unique concept, Pirate Talk or Mermalade is a novel written entirely in dialogue. An interesting plot is boasted: "two brothers meet a mermaid, fall into pirating, and end up in the Arctic." The quotes used in the beginning of the book are beautiful. Lastly, Terese Svoboda's writing is engaging and skilled.

What I disliked, and actually ruined the book for me, however, was its poor choice of layout. Allow me to explain. This book is written completely in "pirate talk" between two characters. This would work well if it was written like a theatrical script, listing the names next to the lines of dialogue. However, no names are ever used in this book. The next person's line is only indented as a cue for the audience. Pirate Talk or Mermalade also lacked narration of any kind. This would have been helpful while navigating its heavy speech.

It was difficult for me to read sprawling dialogue for so many pages. I was usually too concerned with figuring out who was saying what instead of paying attention to the advancement of the story. Once I figured out who was speaking, the chapter would end, sending me back to a confusing start. I felt my mind growing weary and my eyes going crossed with each page. On the back cover, it is mentioned the author specifically wrote this book for Talk Like A Pirate Day.

It seems that Pirate Talk or Mermalade is meant to be a novelty. But the book's whimsical streak turned out to be its greatest weakness. This is a shame. Everything else about the book creates the foundation for a terrific novel. With some minor editing, it could become an interesting, engaging story that is also accessible to read. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if these brothers became something akin to Harry Potter.

Written by: Jacquie Piasta, October 3rd 2010

Weapons Grade: Poems

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Terese Svoboda

University of Arkansas Press

Reading Terese Svoboda’s poem “Vets” title to finish reminded me of a story of an older friend who marched against Vietnam early, before others had marched, and who told me of the veterans. Those veterans of earlier wars would march with the students, the protesters, the young, and the naïve. These veterans would encircle the protestors to protect them from those who tried to stop them. The police dared not stop the veterans—those people who lost their youth as they (once again) protected the innocence of others—now in their own cities. Reading “Vets” reminds me of that story because Svoboda’s veterans “march to quell youth–ours and theirs– / defining innocence, as vets do.”

In Weapons Grade, Svoboda’s themes diverge from what most readers might experience in their lives. Her poetry explores genetic experimentation on Black soldiers, suicide, and world events. This collection addresses violence, whether it is self-inflicted acts of violence or violence done to others, linguistic violence or the impersonal, militarized violence of the state. Svoboda’s preoccupation with the destruction that results from occupation and preoccupation is reflected in the poetry's own violence.

Women, for instance, are both perpetrators and recipients of violence. Svoboda creates a world where women are warriors, but their resolution and violence is not necessarily strength. On the surface their violence is destructive, but there is a truth to be found in destruction as well, and, in a way, Svoboda encourages the reader to embrace it.

Written by: Elisheva Zakheim, February 23rd 2010

Trailer Girl: And Other Stories

admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By Terese Svoboda

University of Nebraska Press

One of my favorite short story collections of all time is Black Tickets, a masterpiece written by Jayne Anne Phillips in the 1970s. So hauntingly poetic and impressive were these stories written about rootless misfits by a young and relatively unknown writer that a giant of the short story genre, Raymond Carver, contributed a blurb to the book’s back cover. He wrote: “These stories of America’s disenfranchised are unlike any in our literature. She is an original, and this book of hers is a crooked beauty.”

A ‘crooked beauty’ is also what the sixteen mostly short-short stories in Svoboda’s Trailer Girl conjure up in word pictures. Written in the style of dreamy prose poems about the alienated and edgy lives of the walking wounded, these stories shimmer and dazzle with an intensity that sometimes creates the feeling of the world as a floating, melting cloud of illusion.

In the title novella, a woman is obsessed with the idea there’s a wild child living in the gully near the trailer park where she lives but nobody believes her. Is the wild child a figment of her imagination to help her deal with the sexual abuse she suffered as a child? The other trailer residents ignore her—until there is a murder.

In “Psychic” a clairvoyant suddenly discovers her client is a murderer and then proceeds to exploit him. In “Lost the Baby,” an alcoholic couple black out and can’t remember where they dropped off their child. In “Sundress” two kicked out foster children move into a house while the owners are away on vacation and pose as house-sitting relatives. For a little while, they pretend they have a home to call their own and are blissfully happy.

Models of compression, these short stories are each skillful dramas about the lives of those on the dark side of the American dream. The style is a searing and cutting edge exploration of the long lasting effects of abuse and loss. For those who like elegantly poetic stories, Svoboda’s the real deal: a writer’s writer who unflinchingly makes us see with an almost hallucinogenic double-quick timing. Her brilliance will leave you breathless.

Written by: Cheryl Reeves, February 8th 2010