"How to Monetize Despair" is a captivating exploration of a wide range of subjects and ideas, from traumatic loss and the sorrows of human relationships, to the natural but absurd world of neurotic caterpillars and philosophical cockroaches. With a unique blend of imagery, self-help inspired titles, and Mottolo’s peculiar brand of humor, this collection takes readers on a one-of-a-kind journey through the human experience. This collection is a must-read for anyone seeking to explore the complexities of trauma and struggle, and to encounter a butterfly or a sea creature along the way.
"How to Monetize Despair" is a captivating exploration of a wide range of subjects and ideas, from traumatic loss and the sorrows of human relationships, to the natural but absurd world of neurotic caterpillars and philosophical cockroaches. With a unique blend of imagery, self-help inspired titles, and Mottolo’s peculiar brand of humor, this collection takes readers on a one-of-a-kind journey through the human experience. This collection is a must-read for anyone seeking to explore the complexities of trauma and struggle, and to encounter a butterfly or a sea creature along the way.
How to Monetize Despair
Poems
For you in particular
Part I: How to Be a Flock of Burning Canaries
How to Write About Trauma 9
The Loneliest Blue is the Reflection of the Sky 11
There are Monsters 12
Don’t Forget to Take Your Heart Medicine 13
Write About Death 14
Fatigue is the Light Missing from a Broken Bulb 16
Your Mother Gave Birth to You 17
The Worst Thing About a Sad Story
is the Saddest Part is Rarely Told 19
American Summer 21
The Hummingbird’s Displays 22
The No Excuse Exercise Guide 24
Obituary for a Small Parrot 25
I keep talking about my dead mother, 26
like a farm that never forgets a drought
We Only Speak Well of the Dead 27
Balloon 28
Immune and Joyful Children 29
White Plates 30
Part II: How to Remove the Kettle from the Flame Right Before its Hideous Whistle
A Philosopher Afraid of the News 38
The Vacant Expression of a Cell Phone Screen 39
Commercials 41
Stephen Hawking & Robotic Dolls 42
Bread Box 44
Contemplating More Vanilla Pudding
or a Slightly Later Death 46
Please Show me That Someone Else
Wanted Something and Never Received it 48
Boots Abandoned 50
The Entire World 51
Scarier Than Hell Ever Was 52
People Always “Used to” be Something 53
Memoriam for the Grocery 55
The Electric City 57
The New Yorker 59
Our Fig Tree Grows as Though the World
Doesn't Care What Ugly is 60
Part III: How Not to Succumb to Mediocrity
I Don’t Know Why Butterflies
are Considered Beautiful 63
The Trouble with Writing About Caterpillars 65
How Not to Succumb to Mediocrity 66
A Whale is Not the Biggest Thing in the Sea 68
The Sea is for the Loved 70
As Though Their Stiff Veins
Could Solve the Bird’s Pain 71
Orange Belly 73
This is the Reason Someone Has Three Martinis 74
At Night 75
The Word “Intolerable” 76
A Home to Virtually Nothing 78
Sonder 80
Mountains of Bones 82
Sympathy for Indoor Plants 83
Destroying a Flower 84
How to Monetize Despair 85
A Less Brilliant Yellow 87
We are Nothing if Not Endless Seekers of the Beautiful 89
Acknowledgments
How to Write About Trauma, Penn Review.
Your Mother Gave Birth to You, Louisiana Literature.
The No Excuse Exercise Guide, Ethel Zine.
Balloon and Breadbox, Slipstream.
I keep talking about my dead mother, like a farm that never forgets a drought, SWWIM.
My Mother Drank Black Coffee, Stonecoast Review.
A Philosopher Afraid of the News, Santa Clara Review.
Stephen Hawking and Robotic Dolls, Diagram.
The Vacant Expression of a Cell Phone Screen, The Laurel Review.
The New Yorker and The Electric City, Albany Poets.
The Trouble with Writing about Caterpillars, Counterclock Journal.
A Whale is not the Biggest Thing in the Sea, Doubly Mad.
Sonder, Little Patuxent Review.
At Night, North of Oxford Journal.
Boots Abandoned, Indefinite Space.
Part I: How to Be a Flock of Burning Canaries
How to Write About Trauma
It is so peaceful to be unconscious.
The EMT cradled me like a long sleep
as he carefully pulled me from the wreckage.
My mother was in the front seat.
Not unconscious, just dead.
A different, permanent type of peacefulness.
I’m taking a free course, now.
How to write about trauma.
All the students are women,
and I wonder if they’re more prone to trauma
or if it’s because the trauma is often the result of men.
I’m not saying it is, I’m just wondering if it is.
My mother was driving us home from her fiancé’s house
after a long day and she fell asleep at the wheel.
Everyone always encouraged me to feel guilty.
“Maybe you could have woken her before you crashed.”
I don’t know, because I don’t remember.
My brain won’t let me remember,
and that’s probably for the best.
All I remember is seeing and feeling blackness,
like a starless space,
and hearing my mother’s last words,
“what time do you think we’ll be home?”
The Loneliest Blue is the Reflection of the Sky
God is the expectations of our ancestors, and I come from a family with low expectations. Upstairs, the carpet is half-removed and folded over, and my blood from two decades ago is a dry splash in the corner. My father slowly paces in the kitchen. He picks up crumbs I can’t see and rants about mice. I ask him if his eyes are blue or green, and he says, “I don’t pay attention to that shit.” I remember putting pink barrettes in his curly mullet as a child. I probably knew his irises then, in the way I know the sunlight while actively avoiding looking at the sun. The walls of his house are quiet. I chew my water. I eat with the mouth of an unanswered question. I want to tell him I once thought I’d catch bubbles of silence in my mouth until life ended. That I was once washed with grief until I was clean as used soap. He tells me to I need to go to church. But my friend and I both read the Bible and The God Delusion together, and we came out dumber with each book. Now I only read poetry, and who knows how that is affecting my brain. But more importantly, who knows the burning last spatter of feces from birds that come barreling out of the sky when a father doesn’t respond to “I love you”? I take a bath and it feels like cold wind. I listen to the clouds, and the edges crisp like the ends of cigarettes. I have found the edges of my father’s voice. They hang like frayed strings longing for ties. I’ve almost found a way to harness the stringy clouds. I’ve almost found a way to strangle the sky.
There are Monsters
I once killed several caterpillars
below a tree that was dripping with them
as though they were rain or sap,
and their falls were silent as a balloon.
Don’t ask me about their faces,
too small to know there are monsters
they have evolved to evade.
Really, the tree was dripping.
All I ever wanted was to marry the Titanic.
To break into gigantic pieces
so everyone would know
something happened here.
But instead I became a daughter left
by a mother who loved lighthouses,
those romantic things with bright lights
that show the ship the shore.
Don’t Forget to Take Your Heart Medicine
Everything is possible. I am capable. We can seek help from a god we don’t believe exists. I am only bad at things because I believe I am bad at them. Etc. etc. etc. Just one time I’d like to open a self-help book and see a picture of the author at their absolute worst, and have them say, “I know what you’re thinking. What a before picture! But this was this morning.” Or perhaps it could have a photograph of an old, lonely man covered in liver spots, looking out a window as a recreational activity even though there’s a brick wall blocking any view, and the place beside the window is the coldest spot in the house, and it is winter in Chicago, and the man is nursing a hemorrhoid, and by nursing I simply mean he has a donut cushion, not anything crazy, and there’s no pictures on the wall, unless you count the note beside the bathroom mirror that says “don’t forget to take your heart medicine,” and somehow you can tell all of these from the photograph, and the caption simply says, “This is your future even if you try.”
Write About Death
It is fortunate
death is soft like mushroom
or a bruised bone,
because this allows us to handle it
without callusing our hands.
I am tired of things that sit in my hands
too lightly or even too beautifully,
and this is why I don’t write about death
as often as I used to.
I clasp every death I’ve ever known
into my palms like a locket
that closes too tightly
and I keep them there
as though I value a tragedy
that hangs around the neck
pretty.
I Pick up a Heart and Peel it Like a Mango
I know how to cut up a mango because of my mother,
and I know how to mangle hearts because of my father.
I’ve only ever wanted to be something smaller.
Smaller in size, smaller in impact, smaller in pain.
But these mangoes grow the more you peel them.
These snarls tangle more tightly the more you pull them.
Obituaries for our past selves are written every day.
Some are in the form of self-help books.
“What you choose to focus on becomes your reality,”
says one such book.
So I throw away the hearts,
and I focus on the pigeon outside,
looking like the sun lost to the west,
fluffing its grey wings, puffing its grey chest.
Before I have even turned the opening page of How to Monetize Despair I somewhat know this is going to have me hooked. With an intriguing choice of title and dramatic cover imagery, Lisa Mottolo's poetry collection is one which marks itself as bold and unapologetic from the get go. Those of a sensitive disposition should step aside now.
In just under a hundred pages, this collection provides readers with an assortment of stanza-led poetry and monologue segments, divided into three segments but overall covering the key milestones of grief, from the initial shock trauma to forming new pathways in life. In one poem titled "We Only Speak Well of the Dead", Mottolo inserts feelings love and compassion expressed in the wording against a title backdrop of dry humour (in this case, the observation that so often death blesses one's legacy with a celebrated status which the deceased are unable to appreciate). It is a slightly twisted view of the world, but one which feels clever and, like much of Mottolo's poetry, one you need to read for yourself to truly appreciate.
The monologue excepts of writing are monolithic, taking up to a page with the author intentionally leaving the copy as one lump of solid text. It forces the reader to tackle the content in one go, or else face losing their place in the text altogether, however once you adopt the differing approach to reading you are greatly rewarded with beautiful imagery and ideas on the meaning of life that for better or worse will haunt you long after you have finished reading.
How to Monetize Despair makes for a strangely captivating read. It is hard to put into words how Mottolo does it, she just does. In truth the only way to fully understand this poetry collection is to read it for yourself, do that and then we can talk.
AEB Reviews