The Ward at Twilight: Goth Poems by Ken Anderson, (2024) Island of Wak-Wak. 98 pages, @6”X9”. $15.00 US. ISBN: 978-91-989589-1-9 Available on Amazon.
A Review by Herb Kauderer
This book is a current Elgin nominee in the full-length category, and a strong contender. True to its sub-title this long collection, told in seven chapters, stays on its Goth theme throughout.
There are 70 poems, 57 previously published, but none in the usual Spec Markets, such as Dreams & Nightmares, Star*Line, Scifaikuest, Asimov’s and so on. Instead, most appeared in literary markets, though all the poems are dark spec or spec-adjacent. Themes and tropes include rabies and its madness, burial and exhumation, troubled sleep with uncertain nightmares, suicide, ladies with blades, twisted families, deals with the devil, Frankenstein’s creature, meeting the figure of death, a séance, Wuthering Heights, a mummy, narcolepsy, being buried alive, and more.
The first chapter starts with a long poem, “Liebestod”, told in three scenes (as are another handful of poems here, at least one labelled triptych). The scenes are different, but seem to share a viewpoint woman and references to Wurlitzer organs. The organs are a nice addition to the Goth feeling. While the organs became popular a century or more after the time of the Gothic movement in literature, they are contemporary with the Grand Guignol (1897-1962) period in France which in many ways is at the heart of the nu-Goth movement. The author specifically cites that Parisian theatre of horror in “White Tower” (70). The Grand Guignol, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), procreated to hatch the nu-Goth cultural movement that began in the 1980’s. “Liebestod” (1-3) mines the Poe-esque tradition of the doomed maiden/bride.
The second poem, “Necro” is an ode to necrophilia, fully embracing the aesthetic of the Grand Guignol, and the poem is uncomfortably sensuous.
How I thrill
to death’s exquisite charms—
the perfect poise, the sexy makeup, the coy kiss
of those cold wax lips.
-4
A non-sensuous provocative line is addressed to a dead lover, “We have a lot/ in common” (4). A book should stay in character like a character should stay in character, and the first two poems establish the character of this book.
“The Strange Young Count” (12) applies Poe-esque rhythms to the count and his brother in a more ancient setting. It is followed by “Vampire Valentine” (15) with more a modern voice and science including blood types. “Mommy’s Little Joke” includes “Oh,/ who could ever tell a pixie/ from a natural child?” (33). The poem takes unusual roads from common takes on changeling children.
The title poem to the collection begins,
One night, I heard a secret violin
and danced and danced in a clearing
in the woods my husband called the den.
I danced so much, in fact, I sprouted wings
-48
In the deals with the devil area, “And in the Bargain Too” includes,
So you papered the walls
with glossies
of saints
and, near the threshold, set a font
-54
The sixth section is titled “Churchyard Thing” and has the feel of an homage to the Graveyard Poets who were the precursor, to the Gothic genre, to romanticism and to Frankenstein. “The Vault” (74) is set in a graveyard and ends,”
One slab had dissolved to the glass it was, cinereous
with dust and streaked with rain that must have dribbled
from some fissure’s grin.
I slowly focused on, behind the film, an urn,
as if somehow I could see through life into death, fathoming
at last its perfectly vacuous depths.
“Where All Our Dead Ones Lie” (78) includes this from the second section,”
Memory had romanticized the yard.
I pictured cypress shadows braided with weeds,
a dance of crooked monuments, a ruin,
The last poem, “Poisoned Well” (99) nicely casts the shadow from which Goth is created. It begins,
Down inside
is a poisoned well, the psychic source
of all my poems and dreams.
If this book has weaknesses, they are primarily the weaknesses of Goth writing. Vocabulary that feels less precise because of its unfamiliarity. More moody descriptions than necessary. Images sometimes carved for grotesque value rather than to forward the poem, or perhaps poems whose destination is the grotesque image.
When Poe titled his fourth book Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1839) he intended to raise those descriptors to the level of art. While grotesque means repulsively ugly or distorted, Arabesque means ornamental usually in the way of intertwined flowing visual lines. That sense from the graphic art meaning applies well to writing. The combination was powerful then, and I feel that, at times, Anderson lived up to creating just that flavor of art.
This book will likely appeal to those who like Goth, but also to those who have a little patience and like a share of dark fantasy. It is a rich meaty book of twining language and image and may become a favorite to those who favor such things.
Herb Kauderer is a Professor of English at Hilbert College near Buffalo, NY. Thousands of his poems have published. His most recent chapbook is Words Begat Words. He often walks the shores of Lake Erie stealing poetry from seagulls only to lose it in the ceaseless wind.
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