Review: Cure All by Kim Parko
May 23
Review amelia gray, cure all, daily s-press, diagram, goodreads, kim parko, matt bell, Review, smash cake magazine, tracy lucas 4 Comments
I wanted to like Cure All ($8 USD, Caketrain, 2009). I waited eagerly for it to arrive in the mail, marveled at the killer cover artwork and aqueous feel of the book flesh in my hand, and expected great things.
What I found was at best flitting. At worst, disjointed.
Cure All is a bizarre, surreal mix of images and wordcandy thrown together and stirred with some mysterious, floppy utensil that didn’t quite hit all the dry spots at the bottom.
No one can say this work isn’t original, I’ve got to grant Parko that. It’s gutsy, and that’s something. But more than any cohesive flavor, her compilation just feels jerky and pointless. Nothing tasted the same for long enough to reach any better conclusion. Only five pages into this sleek volume, the reader in me started keeping mental score. Two cool lines, four I wished I’d skipped. A solid paragraph, a runny six pages. The score became so distracting that I couldn’t let go and ride along. Every time I tried to liberate these words and let my emotions take over, a fresh dose of “what the hell are you talking about?” rose up and slapped me in the face.
