If the Tabloids Are True What Are You?: Poems and Artwork

A brilliant combination of poetry and visual artwork by Matthea Harvey, whose vision is "nothing short of blazingly original" (Time Out New York)

She didn't even know she had a name until one day she heard the human explaining to another one, "Oh that's just the backyard mermaid." "Backyard Mermaid," she murmured, as if in prayer. On days when there's no sprinkler to comb through her curls, no rain pouring in glorious torrents from the gutters, no dew in the grass for her to nuzzle with her nose, not even a mud puddle in the kiddie pool, she wonders how much longer she can bear this life. The front yard thud of the newspaper every morning. Singing songs to the unresponsive push mower in the garage. Wriggling under fence after fence to reach the house four down which has an aquarium in the back window. She wants to get lost in that sad glowing square of blue. Don't you?
--from "The Backyard Mermaid"

Prose poems introduce deeply untraditional mermaids alongside mer-tool silhouettes. A text by Ray Bradbury is erased into a melancholy meeting with a Martian. The Michelin Man is possessed by William Shakespeare. Antonio Meucci's invention of the telephone is chronicled next to embroidered images of his real and imagined patents. If the Tabloids Are True What Are You? combines Matthea Harvey's award-winning poetry with her fascinating visual artwork into a true hybrid book, an amazing and beautiful work by one of our most ingenious creative artists.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 08/19/2014
ISBN: 9781555976842
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.99lbs
Size: 10.06h x 7.08w x 0.47d

Review Citations: Library Journal 05/15/2014 pg. 81
Publishers Weekly 06/16/2014
Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/03/2014 pg. 30
Books & Culture 09/01/2015 pg. 35