Creatures Among Us - Prose Poems by Rebecca Lilly
Publication Date: August 15, 2019
Paperback, 96 pages
ISBN: 978-1-937968-57-1
$16.95
Strange practices I’m acquainted with! One
part of myself, a crazed character, talks to
another in an alphabetical degeneration.
It’s not the way of the shaman, but my own
signature dialogue.
In the poem “An Abstract Piece” an imagined work of art is described “As if you’d dipped your foot in quicksand / lit with fairy dust… / No book could do / it justice.” That’s an apt description for this collection as well, except this book does do justice to Rebecca Lilly’s fantastical visions, which are indeed shamanic.
Physics tells us that could be other universes parallel to our own, and to open this book is to stumble headlong into just such a universe, a strange and yet strangely familiar world of mirrors, shadows, and doppelgangers, where the “creatures among us” are often our other possible selves. That these realms seem so reasonable, so fully realized, is a triumph of Lilly’s language, which is in every sense of the word spell-binding. There are also many appearances of graveyards and funeral parlors and their functionaries, the instrumentalities of death, but never merely morbid, more another indication of commerce between worlds – like “The Stone” which is described as
a peephole on the cosmos,
holding the sun’s heat even as it darkens–
a remnant of its previous life when the stone
was a star.
And what of the one who conjures these visions? “I’ve always been a fan of Grimm adages”, she admits at one point, and appropriately she returns to this fairy tale world in the closing lines, where, as the “Lady of Antiquity,” she says of herself
I’m no queen. More a
jack of all trades, or a wolf in the bonnet and
dress of an old maid.
Don’t let her disguise fool you – this is a cunning, audaciously original work, and world.
Praise for Rebecca Lilly & Creatures Among Us
Creatures Among Us turns loose the daredevil imagination and atmospheric chills I’ve always hoped for in poetry but rarely encounter. Whether we’re whispered to by water goddesses, peeping into secret rooms of funeral parlors through the lens of the Rosicrucians, or breathed on in a closet by a reaper who suggests Halloween dress-up parties, Rebecca Lilly’s splendid collection will hold readers spellbound.
Matt Schumacher, editor of Phantom Drift
Dark and imaginative, Rebecca Lilly’s Creatures Among Us takes time to fully unearth, and so it should not be approached lightly. Switch off electronic devices, light a black candle and allow yourself to sink, delicately, into its arcane depths as though it were a hot spring or – perhaps more fittingly – an open grave.
Timothy Grayson, poet in residence, Belvoir Castle
In Creatures Among Us Rebecca Lilly has created a thrilling world of haunted landscapes, shadow-shifting, graveyards, and eerie moonlight. In blocks of words that seem to scroll down screens we hear voices of the dead, alter-egos, doppelgangers, in monologues and dialogues, in magical combinations of fairy tale, philosophy, and dramas of cryptic mythology. With characters like Lucifer, The Reaper, shamans, wizards, oracles, and gravediggers, we are drawn into delightful dreams inhabited by glow-worms, ghosts, funeral directors, contending with insomnia and mystery. You have not read anything quite like these poems, which carry the reader away on a voyage of surprise and wonder, and you will never forget them.
Robert Morgan, author of Dark Energy
A dizzying journey through otherworldly realms with a shape-shifting narrator at the helm. Through dream sequences and fantastical characters, Rebecca Lilly explores timely topics in the age of social media: the identities we assign ourselves, and the fear of losing authentic connections with others.
Anne James, founding editor, Zymbol
“A ghost wrote this poem,” writes Rebecca Lilly in Creatures Among Us. That’s one many-genred apparition! It’s spooky with poem-energy, dialogue-sass, micro-fiction-enigma, and the altered states of fable. Together, they present a world that is strangely and ineluctably immediate. Wizards, oracles, fakirs, sorcerers, and Presbyterians are walkabout citizens, offering comments and koans. Omens, glyphs, witchcraft, casino pamphlets, and hermetic script are the chirography of this dimension, which shimmers all around us – in classrooms, funeral parlors, sanatariums, woodsy hideouts, Malibu castles, and comfortable beds. “'Your hands grasp the bowl of an abyss,'” says one creature, an “Elder.” Reading Creatures Among Us, I felt I was grasping a beautifully crafted figure of what pulses within and just beyond words. I join the creatures who “raise our hats to the phantoms” of this unique parade.
Philip Brady, author of To Banquet with the Ethiopians
Rebecca Lilly holds degrees from Cornell (M.F.A., poetry) and Princeton (Ph.D., philosophy) Universities and works as a writer, photographer, and assistant to a landscape architect. She has published eight collections of poems, including You Want to Sell Me a Small Antique (Gibbs Smith), which won the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize, as well as several collections of haiku from Red Moon Press. Her poems and flash fiction have appeared widely in journals in the U.S. and abroad, such as The Iowa Review, London Magazine, Stand, New American Writing, Conjunctions, Rosebud, and Phantom Drift.