What Monsters You Make of Them

by Christian Teresi

Overview

What Monsters You Make of Them interrogates ecology and injustice through shifting landscapes and ancient cities.

Stand astonished at a painting, venerate the mugshot of a poet, riff on a comedian’s quip, and recall a mentor persevering through grief. Speak of headhunters, of word origins, of saints and gods stitched into a newfound pantheon, of the multiverse as a source of reincarnation. Visit ancient cities, national parks, a sundry of gardens, and the ruins of a farmhouse. A teacher fails to help a student. A student explains war to her teacher. Seize back the forgotten. Kneel to not knowing. Interrogate ecology and injustice through shifting landscapes and know What Monsters You Make of Them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781636281711
Publisher:	Red Hen Press
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	104
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Christian Teresi is a poet, essayist, and translator whose work has been published in many journals, including AGNI, the American Poetry Review, Blackbird, the Kenyon Review, the Literary Review, Literary Hub, Narrative, and Subtropics. What Monsters You Make of Them is his first collection. His work has been supported by a fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He holds degrees from Binghamton University and George Mason University. Born in Albany, New York, he currently lives in Washington, DC, where he works on international education and public diplomacy initiatives.

Editorial Reviews

Echoing out from etymology, ‘the place where they plant the unwanted,’ reveling in the pastiche surreality of US cultural and political history, ‘where each side of time lives in the other’s deepest past,’ Christian Teresi’s exquisite poems are that rare work wrought from deep necessity and sung from an even deeper compassion. Each line captures the ache of desire, the delicate dance of hope, each poem lingering long after reading, haunting ‘as murmurs no longer fluent in their origin.’ Deft in form, this is a dazzling collection, reminding us we are all ‘where the landscape nurtures the in-between,’ and there, in yearning and grace, ‘the end has never been the end.’” —J. Michael Martinez, author of Tarta Americana and Museum of the Americas, which was long-listed for the National Book Award

“Here, Teresi inhabits people, as well as the spaces between them, to reveal the self as a web of interconnections. The dialogue between famous authors, Mayan gods, mythic figures, and celebrities accumulates into both a communal self as well as a highly personal one—a mind whose edges are defined by what is questioned and considered. When he says, in ‘Metamorphoses,’ ‘After enough time, no one remembers who anyone was,’ it is actually a celebration of this communal, human interaction.” —Richard Siken, author of I Do Know Some Things, War of the Foxes, and Crush, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

"A cogent, skeptical collection that examines those whose stories are erased or preserved."—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2024-09-09
In Teresi’s collection, he examines inequities, hierarchies, and history.

In the opening poem, “Reading Osip Mandelstam in Zion National Park,” Teresi notes that the park’s very name comes from “the decisions of bureaucrats / And missionaries who ignored and redacted the indigenous words / Renamed this place after the Jerusalem fortress David conquered.” He quickly moves from the lasting effects of colonialism to the park’s unique beauty: “The quaint vulgarity of human architecture has no blueprint for this.” The tension between humankind and the natural world continues throughout, with Teresi frequently observing how humans have treated one another across time. He uses a few recurring structures, so indicated by their titles: for example, the “reading” series features the narrator studying the work of historical figures while visiting national parks. In “Reading Osip Mandelstam in Zion National Park,” Teresi adeptly juxtaposes the Zion National Park’s open landscape with the “windowless rooms” that held Mandelstam, a poet who was exiled and then imprisoned by Stalin’s regime. The collection also includes a series of conversation poems between two asynchronous figures. The boxer Mike Tyson explains aging and the perils of fame to the Romantic poet John Keats, “Most men must take a few punches / To win, but not you and me, John,” and Mayan gods pity Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and his court decisions. Other poems use the same phrases but ordered in two different columns and grapple with humanitarian issues, like the deaths of refugee migrants or the whitewashing of history. These stylistic choices work well, grabbing the reader’s attention and underscoring the overarching theme of interrogation.

How people justify their decisions permeates the book. Teresi writes, “We think it mercy to forge one narrative / By removing another.” The “we” collectively implicates humanity in a long timeline of atrocities. Often, the justifications or motivations Teresi presents trace back to the divine and the ways various religions have used gods—Christian, Greek, or pre-Columbian—to serve personal interests. Here, a self-serving religious figure faces the consequences of his actions: A minister preaching about the Tree of Knowledge is later killed by a tree in a car accident. Teresi also grapples with how new generations are unaffected by prior wrongs. In “We Call it Wisdom,” a poem about teaching students about war’s effects, children react with laughter. Teresi’s work has the frankness of someone who, as one of his speakers believes, “suspects nothing natural holds / On to vulnerability with nostalgia.” The author also employs imagery of damaged flora, fauna, and landscapes to explore how developed nations have collectively ravaged the planet. These verses allow readers to draw their own conclusions about the costs of human progress and even consider what no longer exists: “The ground is woven with the diaphanous swelling of where a birch once was…it is there, even after the ax, even after the hollering rot of a stump.” Overall, Teresi’s collection offers a cleareyed, inventive take on the effects of power.

A cogent, skeptical collection that examines those whose stories are erased or preserved.

Kirkus Reviews