What if the lady -- Jane Austen’s contemporary --who conceived the world's most intriguing modern monster (Doc Frankenstein’s creature) -- was also a proto-suffragette, precursor-feminist, and, simultaneously, much to her chagrin, wedded to a narcissist poet, whose liberalism urged on his libertinism? How would such a woman think? What would she say about her majuscule Romantic dilemma and miniscule romantic predicament? Such are the questions that Chad Norman pursues in his act (and art) of sympathetic re-animation: Squall: Poems in the Voice of Mary Shelley.
"[A] Promethean realm, a lump of humanity-rich clay thunked on a potter’s wheel, waiting to be spun, released (unleashed?) into the world ...exquisite work." —Bill Arnott, The Miramichi Reader
Strong literary poetry that pursues questions about feminism, liberalism, education, through the lens of Romantic writer Mary Shelley.
Norman excels at depicting the emotional turmoil of a brilliant woman forced into the shadows, and Judith Bauers gothic illustrations amplify the power of Normans words.
ReadingSquall, like everyone, I'm in relative isolation, anxious,our meteor's shadow widening. Crude sutures hold us intact, aspiration and decay, swen into post-mortem cross-stitched lumps. Awaiting animation, a sculpture like Chad Norman, to free us.
![Squall: Poems in the Voice of Mary Shelley [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/8/6/6/2_4300469.jpg "Squall: Poems in the Voice of Mary Shelley [Paperback]")