This comic book is a collection of stream-of-consciousness poetry and elaborate, swirling, artwork. The four sections of the book each present separate stories accompanied by a slightly different choice for the artwork.
Kalamity J's text appears on the pages, unboxed, unfiltered. The words are, in general, printed in rows like regular text, but every once in a while appear bold, highlighted, or in wavy lines across the page. The illustrations are almost like those in a picture book, appearing on the facing page, (separated from the text, contrary to traditional comic book style,) or are arranged amongst the text.
The book focuses on the trauma of being raised by a coke addled then later Valium popping mother who, after Kalamity's father is gone, goes through a string of unfortunate boyfriends or just plain disappears. Retelling traumatic events often seems to give artists license to free-associate, vomit emotionally, and publish without editing. Editing would make it dishonest? Remove the grit? I doubt it.
The project seems to attempt to extricate the author from her poisoning past without too much thought for the reader's experience. The text is sloppy, with statements like, "I think of her, laughing like in pictures with babies and birthday cakes. Pictures of us. Pictures I can't remember." Clearly, she remembers the pictures, she is describing them. I believe she meant to say she didn't remember the event, the smiling moment itself. The text contains loads of sentence fragments and relies heavily on line breaks, as on page 33, "a rib/ broken/ heart," (5-7). The language slithers fiercely across the page using strong internal rhymes and alliteration. It reads like slam poetry. I started to question her choice of words, unsure if she had chosen them for their meaning or for their sound.
After reading Allison Bechdel's careful pros, Mother's Urn felt clumsy and rudely done.
The artists describe themselves on the back cover of the book. They seem to apologize for their work with statements like, "do not shoot the artist, she was doing her best", and describing their own work as something they were "jotting down", "abstract", and of course, sign off with,"enjoy the kalamity". These words are meant to be heart-wrenchingly honest, I'm sure, but they seem at best, to be fishing for compliments.
Interesting...I interpreted the comment about pictures she could not remember as they never existed, mostly because she writes, "laughing like in pictures with babies and birthday cakes." To me, "like" was the key word in that phrase; it suggests a comparison to photos, but not the actual photos. Also, that section is titled "No refills on the photo album," which might suggest that the photos that we see on page 23 may not have ever existed. When she says that her mother will be home any day now, "I know she will: I've got a birthday coming and she forgot her Valium" (26), I don't get the impression that her mother was around for a lot of photo ops.
ReplyDelete"Also, that section is titled "No refills on the photo album," which might suggest that the photos that we see on page 23 may not have ever existed."
Deletethanks for breaking that down because i was fishing through my brain waves trying to figure that out!!!!!! the photo as well as the title of that section...
I'm glad you brought up how the text reads like slam poetry. I had a similar experience. As someone who has been to a few poetry slams, I was able to apply that sense of building emotion that you hear in readings of that nature to Mother's Urn. As I read each word to myself, I got the sense of the volume increasing and the tone becoming more serious and passionate. Like I said in my blog post, I think the imperfections of the book made it feel genuine. You mention something about the book being unedited intentionally in order to provide the book with authenticity, but you're not sure that was pulled off effectively?
ReplyDeleteYou're right, it's not literary and so applying the literary criteria on it is a little harsh. but let's look at the elements, as i said last week? let the book teach you how to read it
ReplyDeleteWe'll look at what it does and what doesn't
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Funny to mention slam poetry, Kalamity is an artist on the spoken word scene in LA...
ReplyDeletealso for a young(er) artist attempting to make an ounce of sense out of her childhood, the book is not nearly as intricate or planned or worked at for decades as, say, Alison Bechdel did in both of her texts...this text was a necessary shift from the left to the right side of my brain! Alison really works at giving readers a mental workOUT in all sorts of ways, both visual, but especially literary; Kalamity is in for the abstractions and emotion, the space between sentences, pictures, and memory; the spaces that keep memories lost and hazy forever as self-medication takes precedent. it's a really sudden shift, no doubt!