.... reviews ...

here is what people are saying about Some Words Spoken:

Some Words Spoken is a raw, honest and clever read. It should be required reading for all young women over the age of 16. Based on heartfelt experience, it is uniquely feminine yet never crosses the line over to a self-indulgent feminist dogma.

- Jennifer, Commercial Real Estate Project Manager, Toronto

***

Anyone in Toronto familiar with performance poets knows these two, and rightly so: both have been active creatures in modern poetry in an online capacity, open stage / pub reading series, as well as the zine and chapbook circuit. Kuebler and Gould are two productive upstarts who have pulled out all the stops with this perfect-bound, super-slick book with bonus limited-edition CD. The CD is relatively intimate and concise, with an emblematic sample of their (at times cheeky) poetic performance. The pieces on the CD do tend to teeter on a narrative that is more exemplary of thematic constraints crutched on issues of modern love, gender satire (boy versus girl) and garden-variety moral ambiguity, rather than poetical arrangement. This is the constant conundrum with anyone performing poetry; what you leave on the page and take to the microphone or vice versa, what is written for the published page for for the live ear. The produce itself is seriously impregnable to criticism. The book deserves attention.

Gould really hammers home some foul language and nice imagery; even if it seems like something from a bathroom wall, it has its place in this collection:

god is a whore wearing crusty week old underpants
i love the scent of prisons - smells like ass-rape
i'd love to string up honking screaming Leafs fans and gut them like vermin with a sharpened crucifix
that used to be your mom's dildo

('Say It For Art')

That alone was a victory for poetry over mass media, especially daring considering the Toronto sports media's co-dependency on the Toronto Maple Arts. And while the debate over performance poetry versus page poetry will continue long before a reasonable answer appears, one can't help but fall into the tantalizing voice-web of pieces such as Gould's 'Hope is a Whore' or "Why I Quit My Job In Advertising'. Kuebler, by contrast, is less the urban humourist/philosopher and more a Valentine masochist; the work comes off the punch-drunk cuff with equal parts style and hairspray. It's an authentic voice, powered by a seamless doom, spat out in hammered fingernails.

From 'The Night We Slept In Poetry':

We fell asleep in piles of poetry,
books the sharp thin limps jutted out
from beneath your hip, my shoulder,
Life finds us tangled in such unusual ways,
This was always more than a fragile illusion of text,
this was always just mere moments away from realization.

Maudlin and lovesick, drowned in spit and romantically didactic, Kuebler swerves toward an internal subjectivity which is at times illusory; where words push an idea and erode meaning, they erase a resolution, come to an end abruptly. However, there are moments of undaunted clarity and precision. Kuebler delivers both sentimental and self-patriotic lines, "Fish-hooked/into the game", "Phones(ex)" and "I used to believe that we were the sums/ of our broken down appliances/ and half-finished writings." ('mini-skirts). At the height of her expressive powers, Kuebler punches out a tight-fitting focus in the anathematic "Skin Poems":

I have 15 journals and a box of matches.
I'm dreaming of infernos:
flames that lick and spread like a disease.
My words are a virus.
My words are a cancer.
I want to bring you salvation
from all the language and fitful midnight revelations.

This book is both reflexive and artfully conceptual in its attempt to confront contemporary issues in abrupt and thuggish language. There is a constant target being written about, to, and towards the frightening world of romantic enlightenment, deranged and drained emotional economy, with a touch of the occasional perversion.

- Nathaniel G. Moore, WORD literary calendar

***

A fanciful treat of wit and erotic soul. Open the book to any page, and fall into the poem as you would fall into an unknown journey. One moment truth, one moment love, then a sudden attack by the hideous beasts of the subconscious.
- Norman Cristofoli, Coffeehouse.ca

***

This book is a treasure where words connect and reverbrate to create dark insights to the human soul. Shockingly honest, harsh, sensitive and subtle... "Some Words Spoken" deserves your curiosity.
- Malgorzata Nowacka, Artistic Director, The Chimera Project

***

Any work of art, especially poetic forms, should excite the reader both on a cerebral and visceral level. Gould and Kuebler have achieved this with all manner of poetic effects such as the use of thought provoking and fascinating titles; fascinating experiments in formal word play; as well as conducting a kind of heart-play in which the two female parts play a roundelay of mutually enhancing roles in pithy but passionate flirtations. This work comes highly recommended and one can only hope that other writers take note of this as a signpost for future collaborative efforts.
- Nik Beat, host of HOWL on CIUT radio