Congress of Mud by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

In Luiza’s poems a reader finds antic phantasmagorias swirling in her wildly fecund evocative imagination, surreal confusions of micro and macro in cosmic play, her language richly charged throughout these dreamscape extravaganzas with domestic items and dramatic situations transforming into whole new worlds in unexpected combinations, wild conceits in which everything’s roiling, dancing in striking movements of verbs under the multiplicities of both extreme and mundane external and internal weathers. With the concentrated energy of fireworks displays on the page, there is yet a deeper morality, a considered philosophy of mortality at last, in which we can see the skull always grinning there beneath the skin.

–David Schloss

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett both frightens and thrills me with her strength and candor. I find it wonderfully disconcerting to see the desert task of unblinking witness manifest itself in such a tropical garden of imagery. The breathing language in Congress of Mud caresses scars as much as beauty, fear as much as love, until you forget which is which and wonder why we think we can draw lines around parts of our intricate selves. Read “The Mutter Museum” or For Osama” and try not to turn the page. There are no lines around this accomplished young poet. She is too much alive.

–Michael Sims

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]