JoSelle Vanderhooft
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Ossuary: Poetry
JoSelle Vanderhooft
Ossuary is a poetic tribute to the bone panels, bone scrolls and other art of artist, writer and publisher Erzebet YellowBoy. The twenty-four poems in the collection center upon the themes of decay and transformation in much the same way YellowBoy’s work does. Some draw upon world myth and fairy tale, from the dismembering of Osiris in “Osiris, Seed-Scattered” to the schemes of the Greek Fates in “The Moriae’s Tools” to numerous permutations of “Sleeping Beauty,” YellowBoy’s favorite fairy tale which follow the heroine’s descent through dreams and her numerous transformations in body, mind and soul.
Additionally Ossuary seeks to explore the natural world from which the artist draws inspiration—the season’s cycles, nature’s mystery and, of course, the inevitability of death and the transforming process of decay. In Ossuary, the reader will find such things as the wizened beauty of an old woman tending her garden, descents through the grave’s loamy underworld, and the phoenix-like bursting of a bush into flame.
