Bestial Mouths

Brenda S. Tolian is one of the few and revered horror creators who makes you drop everything you’re doing and immerses you in her immersive prose with a pull so powerful, it can transport readers far. It affects me in a way I am having difficulty putting it into words. Her previous book, “Blood Mountain,” left me hungering for a lot more of Tolian’s work, which has an intensity that few other writers possess.

Like her contemporaries Christina Sng, Stephanie Wytovich, and Cina Pelayo, all of whom who have also had award-winning poetry books from Raw Dog Screaming Press, Tolian joins this earth-shaking coven. Her poems are suffused with an energy of rage, of showing women’s power, of warning those who doubt it that they will suffer. Tolian also weaves in expressions of her own disability in a way that is breathtaking.

Her use of language and choices of new lines, of phrases that slap the reader in the face, is a distinct strength of her poems. With things like “snapping of jaw” and “virgins done wrong” and of couplets “some thing you tell” while “others you swallow,” there’s a way that she constructs and deconstructs the storytelling aspects of the poem as a whole, and it is marvellous to experience.

Tolian’s poems also imbue the reader with a sense of hope in the same way that the other RDSP authors mentioned have also done so. I am thinking of Sng in particular and how the messages in her poems make the promise of justice for the wronged, of those who have caused harm finally get their retribution, that women are going to fight back even harder, that we cannot go back.

The metamorphizing affects and transformations in Tolian’s poems are also vivid, taut, and deeply visceral. At times there is raw desire, and it does not apologize for its need.

Tolian is also a writer whose playing around with shapes and forms in how the poems look on the page in shapes is something else that astounds me and is a pleasure to follow.

And there is a sense of magic that blankets the entire collection as the reader can see Tolian in their mind’s eye, weaving magic like the sorceress poet she is, a siren of dark poetry.

So many of the poems are fraught with an intense energy, and of beauty but also ugly truths and all of them come together in what makes for a *magnificent* collection from Raw Dog Screaming Press.

Do NOT sleep on Brenda Tolian’s newest poetry collection. It deserves to win so many major accolades.

Thank you NetGalley and RDS Publishing for the e-ARC of this book ❤️

I didn’t know horror poetry was a thing but the cover caught my eye. This was really creepy and interesting. I liked the mix of horror and feminine rage.

Jonathon Fry was my favorite one, it reminded me of Jack the Ripper.

Beautiful visceral poetry! I loved this so much!! Horror poetry is such an awesome genre and this author didn't disappoint!