A Little Excitement

In Nancy Scott’s most recent collection of poetry, A Little Excitement, the reader is introduced to a wealth of surreal, off-beat, highly inventive poetry that signals a shift in what we believe to be true. Scott suggests it is like a tonic for these terrible times, where long-held norms have been trashed, and we question what we hear and see as fact or falsehood. But Scott does not fall into the trap of rant but rather takes the high road, each poem sparkling with wit and surprise.In many poems, animals and humans co-exist in surprising ways, as in Playing Chess with the Muskrat or in The Elephant in England, where the caged pachyderm bemoans that he can’t stand the stench of humans or in The Bear when a great furry paw whacks the storyteller’s head because he has messed up the bear’s joke.

In poems like Dining with Death, The Old Woman at the End of the Block, Paradise, and The Noodle Doctor the reader is thrust into surreal landscapes that feel oddly familiar (and weirdly possible). Or at an art exhibit where all the collages are cardboard cutouts that are quickly consumed, one visitor, noting that supermarket food is often blander and tougher.

Each delightful poem is an eye into a new reality. Nothing is as it was. After having savored Scott’s words, there is the distinct notion that with a little ingenuity and considerable luck, we, too, can find a way out of the current morass we find ourselves in. When Chicken Licken imagined that the sky was falling, she prayed it would land on the King’s head, then peace would reign in the kingdom again. Go girl!