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WORK TITLE: Bodys
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: San Fernando Valley
STATE: CA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.uipress.uiowa.edu/books/2015-fall/bodys.htm
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Vanessa Roveto hails from the San Fernando Valley of California, where she resides and works as a writer. Her book, bodys, is composed entirely of poetry. The content of the poems is largely sexual in nature, and many of the poems featured in the book start off as relatively mundane situations. One focuses on a stay in the hospital, another on a romantic outing between a couple. However, as the poems progress, Roveto puts a different bend on the situation that places more emphasis on the physical aspects of all of these scenarios and how they impact our society. While seemingly innocent, each scenario begins to shift focus toward a larger metaphor. Even the most seemingly innocent of daily situations takes on a more sexualized and visceral slant, often through the form of abstract imagery and descriptions. What starts off as a fairly innocent situation turns into scenes of self-pleasure, cam shows, and other scandalous acts. Roveto also uses personification to inject a bit of humor into the events of each poem, often using this technique on inanimate objects scattered throughout the scene and forced to pay witness to whatever less than chaste incidents are unfolding within their presence. Through each poem, Roveto explores several issues relevant to the human body and its perceptions, such as disordered eating and the concept of giving and interpreting sexual consent. Roveto also explores how we perceive which parts of the body to give our focus through the various lenses of each situation depicted in her poems. Additionally, Roveto examines not just our relationship with our bodies and the bodies of those around us, but the ways in which we interact with each other as whole. In the process, Roveto also addresses social media and other related topics. Diego Baez, a contributor to Booklist, called bodys “a refreshing, disarming collection.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented: “Through imaginative poems linked by voice and theme, Roveto takes the spectacle of modern consumption and flips it all upside-down.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 1, 2016, Diego Baez, review of bodys, p. 11.
Publishers Weekly, October 17, 2016, review of bodys, p. 48.*
Vanessa Roveto is a writer living in the San Fernando Valley.
bodys
Diego Baez
113.5 (Nov. 1, 2016): p11.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
bodys. By Vanessa Roveto. Nov. 2016. 72p. Univ. of Iowa, $19.95 (9781609384555). 811.
This stunningly strange debut book of poetry, a sequence of oddly off-kilter prose poems, reads like Mad Libs on acid and will stick to the inside of the skull. The untitled poems occupy only half a page, deceptively thick paragraphs that flirt with such licentious topics as cuddle parties, webcam action, and underwater masturbation. This abundance of sexual undertones, overtones, interludes, and innuendos may seem to necessitate blush-colored pixelation or a dark censor bar, even if it's not always clear what exactly is being redacted. A case in point: "The eyes snacked easily, opening to the groups ball antics." Running congruent with the defamiliarizing subject matter is a wary vein that touches on questions of consent, body image, and eating disorders. Throughout, anatomy and objects attain agency, creating a sense of unsettling enchantment. Finally, Roveto adds an anxious humor that counterbalances the weight: "The starched pillow, a kind of weirdo, begged only for recognition from a breath mint." A refreshing, disarming collection, which includes the single most exquisite appearance of "jeggings" (leggings resembling jeans) in American poetry to date.--Diego Baez
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Baez, Diego. "bodys." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2016, p. 11. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471142745&it=r&asid=0f670e2da771ad31ca75d397909a8b16. Accessed 1 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A471142745
Bodys
263.42 (Oct. 17, 2016): p48.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* Bodys Vanessa Roveto. Univ. of Iowa, $19.95 trade paper (72p) ISBN 978-1-60938-455-5
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In this inventive and arrestingly funny debut, Roveto unequivocally makes the familiar strange as she places human bodies in a seemingly endless array of contexts to produce striking and even disturbing juxtapositions. She proves to be a master of the overlay. In these untitled prose poems, Roveto presents familiar settings or propositions--such as going on a date, using a computer, or lying on a hospital bed--that she then double exposes in the manner of a photograph: "It began as they moved into the ward, moved out of the would. He made a sound with her, balling up a cheese, putting their bodies into an incredible organization of one lump." Roveto takes a democratic stance on which body parts and images deserve attention, and unexpected intrusions of the bizarre help shape a surreal and emotionally charged space where eating, sex, and even surgical dissection can overlap. "I wear my buckle to the side so that no one looks at my crotch, she chained to me. I looked at her crotch," Roveto writes. She delivers jolts of sexually electric language and apt critiques of social media: "Connection had grown into a dumb incest television." Through imaginative poems linked by voice and theme, Roveto takes the spectacle of modern consumption and flips it all upside-down. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Bodys." Publishers Weekly, 17 Oct. 2016, p. 48. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA468700011&it=r&asid=35b54113e11bd9069b54a48d34340938. Accessed 1 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A468700011