Amazon.com<\/a>)<\/p>\nIndependent Legions Publishing,\u00a0 2020<\/p>\n
ISBN: 978-88-31959<\/p>\n
Available: Kindle edition, Paperback<\/p>\n
Ever since Jack the Ripper prowled the streets, he has been the worst kind of nightmare, the shockingly brutal and chilling reality that monster-men can be living among us unnoticed, watching and freely choosing fresh victims. In his new book of poetry, Whitechapel Rhapsody, <\/em>Alessandro Manzetti uses words from The Ripper\u2019s letters to the police, information about the women and their possible murderers, and even one of the autopsies to access the mind of a killer who has never been identified for certain.<\/p>\nIn \u201cThe Lair\u201d, which begins the book, and in the rhapsody poems (\u201cSick Rhapsody,\u201d \u201cEntangled Rhapsody,\u201d and \u201cMadhouse Rhapsody\u201d) which appear at intervals throughout the collection, we are plunged into the ugly, sordid, sick environment of physical and spiritual contagion that was the setting for the murders, if not the spawning ground of the murderer. Against this background, the poems describe the killer as a macabre artist who vows to his victims, \u201cI will make art of you\u201d and causes them to be \u201ccarved\u201d by his \u201ciron brushes,\u201d his \u201clong-bladed knife accurate like a Mozart composition.\u201d True to The Ripper\u2019s artistic vision, there is a focus on color, especially shades of red blood and the textures of the organs of the human body in each \u201cstill life.\u201d This is the portrait of a demented artist whose imagination is a \u201cgiant\u201d that \u201ccan feel the vibrating legs of a grasshopper ready to jump on a leaf of a remote island.\u201d<\/p>\n
This extreme sensitivity is on display in \u201cShe Knew My Name\u201d which riffs on Poe\u2019s \u201cThe Raven.\u201d Both poems are about the narrator\u2019s mind and what is happening inside it, how each is processing his experiences. Both narrators indulge in their madness, and that has an emotional impact on the reader. Manzetti confirms that it is not the facts of blood or death that most inspire terror in a reader but the evil imagination of the poem\u2019s speaker igniting the active imagination of the reader\u2019s \u201cdark side.\u201d This fascination that ordinary people have with horror is apparent in \u201cMadhouse Rhapsody,\u201d a reminder of Bedlam where the English citizenry actually went to enjoy the suffering of the imprisoned mentally ill as live entertainment. Also, many of the poems mention the opium, syphilis, perversions, and abuses which were common at the time and could be the source of madness.<\/p>\n
Even though it is unlikely we will ever know Jack the Ripper\u2019s identity or what caused him to kill, Whitechapel Rhapsody<\/em> pulls back the curtain enough for us to fully feel the evil behind the facts and sense the cold, hard facts behind the dark poetic imagination.<\/p>\nRecommended.<\/p>\n
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Reviewed by Nova Hadley<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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