GENRE: Bizarro
AUTHOR: John Baltisberger
PUBLISHER: Planet Bizarro Press
RELEASE DATE: August 14, 2023
You can find more of John here:
Madness Heart Press
*now open for submissions*
COVER ARTIST: WHYPER
What a trip. I normally don’t dive feet first into the realm of poetry. Handing it to John Baltisberger for one gripping title and a hellish fever-dream of a guilty pleasure.
This half-prose, half-poetic tale weaves family history of a child born early to a broken home and later cared for by aging grandparents. (This greatest hits playlist treads familiar ground.)
Revenge on a predatory adult brings temporary satisfaction while I question the narrator’s reliability throughout.
What is reality, anyway?
Many observations crammed into such a miniscule space lead to moments of pause and reflection, to sit with those statements and agree, to sit with those statements in discomfort, and straddle both.
This hybrid stream-of-consciousness verse flows with the main character throughout their life, from elementary through high school and beyond, where substances are abandoned only to then be sent on a mission from the messiah. A study of hyper-evangelical hypocrisy reads as Biblical poetry found in holy texts of yore.
Self-insertion speckles this constellation of verse.
Of course a smile is wrought from the appearance of a Sugar glider kaiju.
This book can be found at Planet Bizarro Press upon release on August 14, 2023.