Vertigo & Ghost: Poems

by Fiona Benson

Overview

Named a Most Anticipated Book of Spring 2021 by Publishers Weekly

Winner of the 2019 Forward and Roehampton Prizes, Vertigo & Ghost offers a searing reimagining of Greek myths of sexual violence that crackles with rage, energy, and empathy.

Beginning with a poem about the teenage dawning of sexuality, Vertigo & Ghost pitches quickly into a fierce, electrifying, riveting sequence that exposes Zeus as a serial rapist, for whom women are prey and sex is weaponized. As unflinching, devastating poems of vulnerability and anger confront Zeus with aggressions both personal and historical, his house comes crumbling down. In its place, acclaimed poet Fiona Benson reveals a disturbing contemporary world in which violent acts against women continue to be perpetrated on a daily, even hourly, basis.

In the volume’s second half, Benson shifts to an intimate and lyrical document of depression and family life. These moving poems probe the ambivalent terrain of early motherhood—its anxieties and claustrophobias as well as its gifts of tenderness and love—reclaiming the sanctuary of domestic private life and the right to raise children in peace and safety. Together, these two halves form a complex portrait of modern womanhood.

Dynamic in its range and risk, Vertigo & Ghost introduces an important British voice to an American audience, a voice that speaks out with clarity, grace, and bravery against abuse of power.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324035978
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/25/2022
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	1,063,738
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Fiona Benson won an Eric Gregory Award in 2006 and a Faber New Poets Award in 2009. Both her first collection, Bright Travellers, and Vertigo & Ghost were shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She lives in Mid Devon, United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

Part 1

Ace of Bass 1

Zeus 3

[Zeus] days I talked with Zeus 5

[Archives] Zeus on parole 6

[Archives] Zeus given light sentence 6

[Personal] Rape is rarely what you think 7

[Surveillance: track and field] 7

[Surveillance: bull kneeling] 8

[Zeus] I LIKE THESE MAGAZINES 9

[Personal: speedo] 10

[Zeus: anatomical dolls] 11

[Personal] He tracked me down 12

[Transformation: Nemesis] 13

[Zeus: Danaë] 14

[Zeus: Semele] 15

[Transformation: Io] 16

[Archives] The day Zeus came to the safe-house 18

[Zeus] WHAT I LOVE 19

[Zeus addendum] 20

[Forensics] 21

[Zeus: or, the problem with God] 23

[Transformation: Cyane] 25

[Not-Zeus: Medusa 1] 26

[Not-Zeus: Medusa 2] 27

[Not-Zeus: Medusa 3] 28

[Closed circuit] Zeus in the electric chair 30

[Surveillance] Zeus under sedation 30

[Transformation: Daphne] 31

[Screenplay] 32

[Zeus: oubliette] 33

[Surveillance] Zeus hooked up 34

[Transformation: Callisto] 35

[Surveillance] Zeus watching carp 36

[Surveillance] Thunder, immanence 37

[Daughter of Zeus: Pallas Athena] 38

[Votive] Hera vouchsafe 39

[Translations from the annals: Ganymede] 40

Part 2

Dear comrade of the boarding house 45

Two Sparrows 46

Marcela Sonnets 3 & 4 48

Almond Blossom 49

Fly 50

Toad 51

After the Flood 53

Haruspex 54

Beatitude 55

White Nose Disease 56

Ectopic / Yellow Seahorse 57

Blue Heron 59

Song for the Rabbit Man 61

Wildebeest 63

Afterbirth 65

Placenta 67

In the milk days of your sister 68

Daughter Drowning 69

Ruins 70

Termite Queen 71

Moon 73

Cells 74

Love Poem, Lucca 76

Portrait of our Daughters 77

Meningitis 78

Heavenly Bodies 80

Village 81

Hide and Seek 83

Wood Song 85

Mexican Free-Tail Bats 87

Eurofighter Typhoon 89

Acknowledgements 93

Editorial Reviews

"Benson here shows us the real, terrifying world in musical, natural scenes which are immediately memorable, whose dark fruit is brewed from sorrow and the condensing pressures of inescapable love."

White Review - Declan Ryan

"[This] extraordinarily moving collection is a bold confrontation of violence against women. Vertigo & Ghost is one of the darkest, bravest and most unsettling collections I have read in a while."

Observer - Kate Kellaway

"Vertigo & Ghost explodes into furious life with a series of poems and fragments about the Greek god Zeus.… [These are] jagged, staccato poems that shoot down the pages like lightning bolts.… [A]n addictive, thrilling, sickening experience."

Guardian - John Self

"A tour-de-force.… [Vertigo & Ghost] has generated a lot of (justified) buzz.… [P]oems of lasting power."

Telegraph - Tristram Fane Saunders

"Misogynistic violence, ancient myth and modern rage confront each other in moving and dynamic verse."

Financial Times - Maria Crawford