Monster Movie - by Laura Bandy (Paperback)

About the Book

Monster Movie is a collection of scenes aiming to show "slices" of American movies and it blends coming-of-age tale, rom-com, noir, sci-fi, and horror, all rolled into one, all within a blind of history's eye.

Book Synopsis

Monster Movie consists of loosely linked poems that are offered cinematically, with one small section a set of odes to modern films, and the other poems presented in semi-chronological fashion as our speakers move from previews to the final feature. The lead characters in these poems often find themselves in circumstances strange, dangerous, unfathomable-how did they arrive in these places? They scan the sky for UFO's... were they abandoned here? Will they ever find home? There is often a sense of needing to escape: the stultifying small towns in which they feel stranded, the rigid expectations of others, the consequences of their own complicated choices, and the vast and indifferent Midwest itself. What they learn is that real escape is harder than it seems. And so, the speakers escape into stories-those they watch and read, and those they create and mutate to tell about themselves. The title poem betrays a sneaking suspicion at the heart of the collection -perhaps this movie we are "starring" in is not the one with the happy ending. Altogether, the manuscript's poems work as a collection of scenes combining to create the whole, a slice of life American movie reflecting the country itself; that slippery genre bender sliding between coming-of-age tale, rom-com, noir, sci-fi, and horror, all within the blink of history's eye.

Review Quotes

Laura Bandy knows all too well that the scariest monsters are not from the movies but of our own making; not under the bed but in the bed with us; not lighting up a screen but lurking in our deepest hopes. Full of "Midwest grit," this terrific collection has the pang of nostalgia and the keen eye of a poet who's been paying attention her whole life. Monster Movie is part coming-of-age narrative, part love letter to horror cinema, and all - start to finish - artful rendering of the terror of what it is to be alive. "There are no ghosts," the speaker of one poem offers hopefully, but we know better.

-Amorak Huey, author of Boom Box and Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy

To delve into Laura Bandy's premier poetry collection Monster Movie is akin to watching the back-to-back premiers of marvelous movies in a kind of cinematic tour de force of poetry. Offered in array of forms, from the prose poem to the contrapuntal to the golden shovel to the rondeau to the triolet, this wildly imaginative collection take us through the worlds of our own familiar childhoods of school memories and family yet seen through the lens of Bandy's unmistakable camera-one in which "late afternoon/bled fading orange over tall corn inviolate and solid" and "To be a twin is hack, who needs two of anything alike, unless one is defective perhaps..." With each poem we are taken we enter a new and carefully directed scene. "We've lost our way, can't find a thread to tug to take us back to the beginning, unless-Knock knock. Who's there. A broken pencil. Broken pencil, who never mind it's pointless." We sit on the edge of our seats for the ride, one that is wild and unexpected ("the shining hill city with no real sense of lasting design or weight"), whimsical and wonderful, rich and entertaining, and always keeping us guessing.

-Julia Mae Johnson, author of Naming the Afternoon, The Falling Horse, and Subsidence

"We are all from somewhere," Laura Bandy writes, with differing flora and fauna and weather, but the monsters are the same. "Monster Movie" is a version of my life: as a woman, as a woman who came of age in the 90s and early 2000s, as a woman who kept coming of age for entirely too long. Bandy remains "Midwest stoic" throughout, our guide to navigating the pitch-dark roads bound by corn fields and burning buildings, the rage of boys and men, sidestepping terrors of all kinds. If this sounds serious as hell, it's also a lot of fun. Like the best night out with your girlfriends before somebody goes missing. In "Monster Movie," the previews are as good as the feature, and you don't want to miss any of it.

-Mary Miller, author of Big World, Always Happy Hour, Last Days of California, and Biloxi