THE POETRY YOUR TEACHER WOULDN'T LET YOU READ Somtow flogs a dead horse to life in this astonishing collection of sonnets. Horror and humor, pathos and putridity, the sublime, the subliminal, and the sublimated all blend together in this tour-de-force of madcap invention. Exposing the human condition in all its grittiness and unwitting comedy, this book is the first collection of S.P. Somtow's poetry since the pretentious outpourings of his adolescent years. "There's life in this art form," he says, "plenty of life, as long as you're willing to dive headlong into the maelstorm of our insane twenty-first century existence." His subject matter comes from the tabloids: serial killers, sex scandals, mass murderers, and hate crimes. Distilled into the severe discipline of the sonnet form, these tawdry subjects find a new resonance, and new relevance, and we recognize in ourselves a continuity with our own past.... "Be scared, my friends. Be very, very scared.
This book will take you from the paths you've known,
To sights unseen, dark corners never bared,
To deeds undared, halls never braved alone.
Forget the world of Spenser's airy Faerie
Shakespeare's bisexual angst, or Petrarch's passion;
This poet's cream's decidedly non-dairy,
His skewed perspective somewhat not the fashion.
To this poetic banquet do I bring
Inquiring minds that have inquired too much:
Of Court TV and Tabloids do I sing,
Of killers, perverts, hypocrites, and such,
For in life's drama, they too play their part.
Inhuman horror hides a human heart.""