Diannely Antigua’s Good Monster grapples with the body as a site of chronic pain and trauma. Poignant and guttural, the collection “voyage[s] the land / between crisis and hope,” chronicling Antigua’s reckoning with shame and her fallout with faith. As poems cage and cradle devastating truths—a stepfather’s abusive touch, a mother’s “soft harm”—the speaker’s anxiety, depression, and boundless need become monstrous shadows. Here, poems dance on bars, speak in tongues, and cry in psych wards. When God becomes “a house [she] can’t leave,” language is the only currency left. We see the messiness of survival unfold through sestinas, episodic Sad Girl sonnets, and diary entries—an invented form that collages the author’s personal journals. At the crux of despair, Antigua locates a resilient desire to find a love that will remain, to feel pleasure in an inhospitable body and, above all, to keep on living.
ISBN: 9781556596902
Format: Paperback
Reviews
“Through richly layered images and precise language, Antigua conveys the speaker’s growing self-awareness as she comes to terms with a formative childhood trauma.” —Leonora Simonovis, Harriet Books, Poetry Foundation
“Positions us in the molten place where vulnerability and strength live together, writing with and into a self-awareness that manages to feel inviting, welcoming, revelatory.” —Nina MacLaughlin, Boston Globe
“Antigua’s sophomore collection is a raw, innovative exploration of the body after trauma. Through lyrical free verse, ‘Sad Girl Sonnets,’ and her invented collage form of the ‘Diary Entry Poem,’ Antigua investigates religious trauma, chronic pain, and mental illness. The result is a poetry collection of considerable courage and vulnerability.”—Skylar Miklus, Electric Lit
“As Antigua elucidates, ‘We can’t heal / or hurt alone.’ So, too, can we not heal—or hurt—without a combination of the confessional and the measured. Good Monster offers both, melding the mind and heart with candor and care. Sometimes it’s hell on earth to suffer—or survive. Antigua’s poems may confess to near death experiences, but she exists within the present continuous, the ongoing, the now.”—Hannah Bonner, Adroit
“Antigua blends Eros and Thanatos until they’re practically indistinguishable. . . . In the end, she seems to be making peace with her inner demon, giving life to an old metaphor, offering roses in the final poem.”—Charles Rammelkamp, The Lake
“As Good Monster remains in conversation with Antigua’s debut collection regarding an abusive stepfather, loss of faith, and sexuality, she deploys form (Sad Girl sonnets, sestinas, collages), direct language, and bold attempts at reconciling with the past to freshly illuminate a self that can avert the presence of trauma or perhaps even overcome it.”—Sara Verstynenm, Booklist
“It takes more than guts to write great poems about shattering truths, chronic pain and trauma, vulnerability in relationships and regrettable sexual encounters. . . . Working confidently with the line, Antigua uses form to hold up the intricate layers.”—Debbra Palmer, New York Journal of Books