Croak

By Jenny Sampirisi

Croak is a frog-and-girl opera in three parts, played out like a YouTube mashup of mid-century cartoons, all set to a contemporary pop song. It parades, mutilates and reacquaints Kermit the Frog with Girl 00010111, Michigan J. with Aristophanes, and biblical plagues with caged canaries in a vaudevillian play of time, culture, gender and narrative. Combining vivisection and classical literature, empirical observation and philosophical speculations, Sampirisi's grotesque characters splash and sparkle before moving toward their inevitable narrative end.





In conversation with Samuel Beckett's Words & Music , Croak presents a negotiation between the doom and gloom of a species in crisis and the many empirical markers we attach to such creatures. Sampirisi reminds us that we are all porous in the mud of language.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Release date: Sep 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781770563018

Jenny Sampirisi

Jenny Sampirisi is the author of the novel Is/Was from Insomniac Press. She is the managing editor of BookThug, where she also edits the Department of Narrative Studies imprint, which focuses on innovative prose. She is the co-director of the Toronto New School of Writing, a series of reading and writing workshops designed and facilitated by working writers. She teaches English Literature and Composition at Ryerson University. Croak is her first poetry collection.

Book preview

Croak

Jenny Sampirisi

Coach House Books | Toronto

copyright © Jenny Sampirisi, 2011

first edition

This epub edition published in 2011. Electronic ISBN 978 1 77056 301 8.

Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Sampirisi, Jenny, 1981-

Croak / Jenny Sampirisi.

Poems.

ISBN 978-1-55245-250-9

I. Title.

PS8637.A5385C76 2011–––C811’.6––– C2011-904946-5

If time frightens us, it’s because it works out the problem and the solution comes afterwards.

– Albert Camus

The rapture did come. It always does. This is what it looks like.

– Charles Bernstein’s Facebook status

The Narrators

if time frightens us it’s because it works out the problem (Tuning fork.) and the solution comes afterwards you see it breaks down as things do in an environment over time so is the problem a solute in the solvent of words some metal or adaptive chemical there in the water knocking at the lips translated from English to English in the water or maybe the mud and the solution comes after words (GIRLS: Ha ha!) in even distribution dissolving as it will in a mixture of green to red breaking down as it does (FROGS: Groan.) listen Frog One Frog Zero Girl One Girl Zero making sounds performing actions that wince at the combination of English on English (GIRLS: Ho ho!) or image on image or object on object and we say this or that if it means solving a problem (FROGS: Groan.) that is if time frightens us in English (Tuning fork.) there are actions here that dissolve the question of time and language slash time and the body slash deformity and language green green and red red porous in the mud (Tuning fork.) listen to the croak croak dying (FROGS: Groan.) it’s only a sounding listen to the finger wagging the arm (GIRLS: He he!) and consider order here (Tuning fork.) it upsets these figures that are all misleading (Tuning fork.) listen:

Part One wherein Frogs and Girls limb alone

Part Two wherein they fall in limb

Part Three wherein they die

(FROGS, GIRLS, THE NARRATORS assemble.)

Part One

Limber

The Narrators

(A crackle in the distance.)

so this is the first part the one you’ve got to land on first (GIRLS: 127-18-4. On repeat.) the one you leap to by merit of thumbs though there were numbers before this and you were certain of them we could even return to them now but this is the first first this is the number you’ve got to learn and there are others who have crouched in one one one one they’ve flipped here

Reviews for Croak

[Ricky · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very interesting plot to story. I recommend this to anyone look for a unique, quirky, and engaging read.