Synopses & Reviews
The Cult of Seizure starts from a wonderfully lush photograph of a Florentine cavern by Tony Urquhart, and proceeds visually through a bestiary of the small creatures that crawl -- lizards, snakes, crickets ... all rendered in the style of the 19th century steel engraving, much after the manner of a dated zoology text.The Cult of Seizure is a combination of the bestial and the bestiary; of terror and of tenderness. Ducornet's sensibility is as hot and sharp and shining as a knife left out in the sun. A truly spirit-stirring collection of poetry.' - Jane Urquhart Rikki Ducornet was born in New York and has lived in North Africa, South America, Canada and France. Her work as an illustrator first came to the attention of the Canadian book trade in 1974 with the publication of Susan Musgrave's Gullband. In 1983, the Porcupine's Quill commissioned Rikki to illustrate an edition of Jorge Luis Borges' Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.Rikki is the author of two short-story collections, five books of poetry, and seven novels, including The Fan-Maker's Inquisition and The Jade Cabinet. She is also a painter whose work has been exhibited widely. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado.
Synopsis
The passions that animate Rikki Ducornet's The Cult of Seizure are both more apocalyptic and less immediately comprehensible, and sometimes seem to indicate a surrender to the imagination rather than a shaping of it. The elemental forces in Ducornet's world explode in irrevocable acts, as in Abracadabra, with its admonitions to Drink the dew from the spoor of a one-legged crone and Take an axe to the spouse of a hardened heretic. Visits aren't recommended to the weak of either spirit or stomach.
But if you're willing to take the plunge into poetry that cuts close to the bone of our dreams and obsessions, The Cult of Seizure contains some absolutely stunning examples of how language can transform actuality. Using as her model the medieval bestiary, wherein natural and imaginary animals mingled in glorious confusion, Ducornet, whose third novel, The Fountains of Neptune was published earlier this year, has mixed the rivetingly graphic and the ferociously fanciful into a striking volume of verse.'
Synopsis
The Cult of Seizure starts from a wonderfully lush photograph of a Florentine cavern by Tony Urquhart, and proceeds visually through a bestiary of the small creatures that crawl -- lizards, snakes, crickets ... all rendered in the style of the 19th century steel engraving, much after the manner of a dated zoology text.