How to Build the Ghost in Your Attic

Iowa Prize winner (Thieves' Latin) Shippy's third collection is a novella-in-verse written in stepped tercets reminiscent of William Carlos Williams'. Told by a resident of a very modern-sounding Thebes, the poem presents itself as a Bizarro-world remake of the Oedipus cycle. Yazoo, a cow, crashes through the chatty speaker's ceiling, spurring him to pontificate about his media-obsessed life and personal struggle with a sick father. Dreamy, playful and at times campy, Shippy's poem interweaves the voices of talking monkeys, birdbots and a flirty Sphinx. The text bends and blends genre, myth and allegory, highlighted by the speaker's catchy patter: ""After // her chutz- / pah / I can't manage to oompah // the money shot."" This is ambitious work that manages to be frequently dynamic, describing a world much like our own: ""These are dark days for our town. / A virulent stain of self-schaden- / freud- // e / is replicating / spreading the boos.""