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selienv's review
2.0
I hope I'm going to like it better when we discuss this in class, because now, it's kinda vague and I don't understand much of it. I really liked the first chapter, however!
- to be continued? -
- to be continued? -
jamesrbgreen's review
5.0
Read this today. Massively surprising and because it deserves higher profile I'll break my goodreads silence and give it a small review. This is a surreal adventure of a poem, fusing medieval sources with modern abstraction, with plenty of grotesques, satire, violence, weirdness. Jay Bernard's language has the gripping quality of a natural storyteller, while imbued with the variety and difference that comes from experimentation.
This is also especially timely, as an act of medievalist historical recovery showing the black presence in Europe from ancient times. It also makes you constantly aware of the page, making this as much a typographical quest as anything else. The blackness of words is made a hugely interesting metaphor: is Sir Morien a word? The tale of Sir Morien, too little known even among medievalists, has been manipulated fascinatingly here, but also sensitively with a great deal of generosity to medieval European literature. A multimedia presentation like all good medieval manuscripts, this is a poem just as much about its presence on the page as it is about its rich sonority.
This is also especially timely, as an act of medievalist historical recovery showing the black presence in Europe from ancient times. It also makes you constantly aware of the page, making this as much a typographical quest as anything else. The blackness of words is made a hugely interesting metaphor: is Sir Morien a word? The tale of Sir Morien, too little known even among medievalists, has been manipulated fascinatingly here, but also sensitively with a great deal of generosity to medieval European literature. A multimedia presentation like all good medieval manuscripts, this is a poem just as much about its presence on the page as it is about its rich sonority.
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