Femme Fatales, Movie Starlets & Rockers (Illustrated Haiku and Short Poems)

Femme Fatales, Movie Starlets & Rockers
by Rp Verlaine

Rp Verlaine's second collection of poetry and photographs
leave the bars and sensuous women of his first collection-Damaged
by Dames & Drinking- for new irresistible sometimes predatory
females and also explores the great icons of film and song. Scryptic
magazine wrote “While focusing on topics such as erotica,
drug addiction and Hollywood scandals, he allows readers to
honor these life changing ladies in a completely rad way as he
puts his own spin on the memories they created.”


Rp Verlaine's brief poems are illustrated with demure photographs
of models that add resonance to what the words convey. He often uses
humor to give his words added bite : “The pole dancing class/
she won't stop going to/ never has homework.” The photographs
of these femme fatales often clad in lingerie are often provocative but
so too are the words: “kissing with eyes closed/ seeing nothing but an
escape/ already worked out.”The second and final parts of the book
shift in subject matter, covering a hundred years of actresses and singers
illustrated by models wearing or holding their memorabilia. Of silent
screen actress Clara Bow he uses ice pick sharp words: “Our flapper for
ages / yet the world never knew/ how badly damaged she was/ except
for her mother/ who tried to kill her.” The collection ends with poems
and photo tributes to Kristen Stewart, Emilia Clarke and Rosario Dawson.

This seventy-three page book contains over a 110 short poems
2 larger ones and an essay on Nico of The Velvet Underground.
It also has over 60 color photographs, many of them given a full page.
Rp verlaine writes in the afterward, he picked only his favorite stars
and the personal nature of many of the poems suggest this. It is poetry
that mixes truth with the beauty of dreams. As he writes of
Rosario Dawson:”I dreamed the bright red/ technicolor slash of her
lipstick/ painted the white lines red/ as we raced with James Dean to
a place called paradise/ that sounds like trouble.”