Cephalopography 2.0 by Rasiqra Revulva
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This poetry collection is unique in a couple of ways. First, its running theme is based on the animal class Cephalopoda (i.e. octopi and squid) and how human life likens to that of those many-limbed creatures. It also features ancillary material such as artistic works and interactive exercises - e.g. build your own octi-poem, "squidoku," etc. The collection consists of free-verse and prose poetry.
The book uses a unique blend of artistic and scientific language. That characteristic creates a niche for the work, but it's also the source of its greatest weakness, a weakness that lies in the fact that a few of the poems send any reader who's not a marine biologist running for their dictionaries. That's a fine quality in a non-fiction book, but can make poetry difficult to absorb - given the importance of the sonic / musical quality of the medium and the need for emotional resonance.
I enjoyed the concept and found it to be clever. While most of the poems were not so laden with scientific jargon to make them incomprehensible for a general reader, a few were. That said, I don't know how niche an audience the book is targeting. I suspect it will have trouble reaching a general audience of poetry readers, though it may resonate more with oceanographers and biologists.
View all my reviews This entry was posted in Animals, Biology, Book Reviews, Books, nature, Poetry, Review, Reviews and tagged Book Review, books, Cephalopods, Cephalopography 2.0, poetry, Rasiqra Revulva by B Gourley. Bookmark the permalink.
