• Home
    • About Luna Luna
    • EDITORIAL TEAM
    • Archive
    • Foster Youth
    • Legal Stuff
    • Mental Health
  • Read
    • Light: Poems, Prose, Essay & Idea
    • Dark: Magical Living & Shadow Spaces
  • Submit
  • Community
  • Light Magic
Menu

luna luna

  • Home
  • About
    • About Luna Luna
    • EDITORIAL TEAM
    • Archive
    • Foster Youth
    • Legal Stuff
    • Mental Health
  • Read
  • Light + Dark
    • Light: Poems, Prose, Essay & Idea
    • Dark: Magical Living & Shadow Spaces
  • Submit
  • Community
  • Light Magic
Recent diary entries
Brendan Lorber on Why Daydreaming Is Important
Feb 20, 2019
Brendan Lorber on Why Daydreaming Is Important
Feb 20, 2019
Feb 20, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Alina Pleskova, Marwa Helal, June Jordan
Feb 19, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Alina Pleskova, Marwa Helal, June Jordan
Feb 19, 2019
Feb 19, 2019
20 Free and Magical Ways to Engage in Self-Care
Feb 15, 2019
20 Free and Magical Ways to Engage in Self-Care
Feb 15, 2019
Feb 15, 2019
11 Valentine's Day dates for badass witches
Feb 14, 2019
11 Valentine's Day dates for badass witches
Feb 14, 2019
Feb 14, 2019
Survival and Truth: How Tori Amos' Under The Pink Changed My Life
Feb 8, 2019
Survival and Truth: How Tori Amos' Under The Pink Changed My Life
Feb 8, 2019
Feb 8, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Monica Youn, Traci Brimhall, Rosebud Ben-Oni
Feb 6, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Monica Youn, Traci Brimhall, Rosebud Ben-Oni
Feb 6, 2019
Feb 6, 2019
How Do We Name Ourselves?
Feb 4, 2019
How Do We Name Ourselves?
Feb 4, 2019
Feb 4, 2019
Your February 2019 Horoscopes Are Here
Feb 1, 2019
Your February 2019 Horoscopes Are Here
Feb 1, 2019
Feb 1, 2019
Kristine Esser Slentz on Polyamory & Being Raised as a Jehovah's Witness
Jan 30, 2019
Kristine Esser Slentz on Polyamory & Being Raised as a Jehovah's Witness
Jan 30, 2019
Jan 30, 2019
Poetry by Brandon Amico
Jan 29, 2019
Poetry by Brandon Amico
Jan 29, 2019
Jan 29, 2019
A Grimoire For Self-Love: A Peek At Light Magic for Dark Times
Jan 28, 2019
A Grimoire For Self-Love: A Peek At Light Magic for Dark Times
Jan 28, 2019
Jan 28, 2019
5 Books I Had No Idea Existed and Must Find at Once
Jan 28, 2019
5 Books I Had No Idea Existed and Must Find at Once
Jan 28, 2019
Jan 28, 2019
Vi Khi Nao Reviews Diana Hamilton's God Was Right
Jan 25, 2019
Vi Khi Nao Reviews Diana Hamilton's God Was Right
Jan 25, 2019
Jan 25, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Omotara James, John Murillo, E. Kristin Anderson
Jan 25, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Omotara James, John Murillo, E. Kristin Anderson
Jan 25, 2019
Jan 25, 2019
Brandon Amico on Why He Doesn't Want to Be Unreachable
Jan 24, 2019
Brandon Amico on Why He Doesn't Want to Be Unreachable
Jan 24, 2019
Jan 24, 2019
How To Become A Freelance Writer: On Starting Out, Discipline & Ritual
Jan 23, 2019
How To Become A Freelance Writer: On Starting Out, Discipline & Ritual
Jan 23, 2019
Jan 23, 2019
Bewitched: When The Velvet Underground Cast an Identity Spell on Me
Jan 23, 2019
Bewitched: When The Velvet Underground Cast an Identity Spell on Me
Jan 23, 2019
Jan 23, 2019
DIY Gift Ideas for The Magical, the Dreamy, and the Crafty
Jan 22, 2019
DIY Gift Ideas for The Magical, the Dreamy, and the Crafty
Jan 22, 2019
Jan 22, 2019
Review of Christine Stoddard's 'Water for the Cactus Woman'
Jan 22, 2019
Review of Christine Stoddard's 'Water for the Cactus Woman'
Jan 22, 2019
Jan 22, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Jessica Morey-Collins, Justin Karcher
Jan 18, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Jessica Morey-Collins, Justin Karcher
Jan 18, 2019
Jan 18, 2019
June Gehringer Tells Us What She's Afraid Of
Jan 16, 2019
June Gehringer Tells Us What She's Afraid Of
Jan 16, 2019
Jan 16, 2019
5 Film & TV Inspired Nightgowns You Need
Jan 15, 2019
5 Film & TV Inspired Nightgowns You Need
Jan 15, 2019
Jan 15, 2019
Music Friyay: Stevie Nicks, Sun Ra, Hamilton Leithauser
Jan 11, 2019
Music Friyay: Stevie Nicks, Sun Ra, Hamilton Leithauser
Jan 11, 2019
Jan 11, 2019
Poetry by Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi
Jan 10, 2019
Poetry by Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi
Jan 10, 2019
Jan 10, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Kay Ulanday Barrett, Devin Kelly, Elizabeth Metzger
Jan 9, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Kay Ulanday Barrett, Devin Kelly, Elizabeth Metzger
Jan 9, 2019
Jan 9, 2019
Poetry by Karina Bush
Jan 8, 2019
Poetry by Karina Bush
Jan 8, 2019
Jan 8, 2019
Hillary Leftwich on Happiness & Why It's Important to Love Childhood Films
Jan 7, 2019
Hillary Leftwich on Happiness & Why It's Important to Love Childhood Films
Jan 7, 2019
Jan 7, 2019
This Moon Playlist Is Everything You Need
Jan 4, 2019
This Moon Playlist Is Everything You Need
Jan 4, 2019
Jan 4, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Chloe N. Clark, Faylita Hicks, Saretta Morgan
Jan 3, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Chloe N. Clark, Faylita Hicks, Saretta Morgan
Jan 3, 2019
Jan 3, 2019
Jordan Rothacker On the Apocalypse, Jared Kushner, and Daily Rituals
Jan 2, 2019
Jordan Rothacker On the Apocalypse, Jared Kushner, and Daily Rituals
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
via  hystericalbooks

via hystericalbooks

Review of 'A Red Witch, Every Which Way' by Juliet Cook & j/j hastain

July 24, 2017

BY JACKLYN JANEKSELA

What happens when two energies collide as if they were falling stars against an inky sky? What happens when two cauldrons boil over and into each other? What happens when two spirits are provoked to write as though conjoined and based on intuition? A Red Witch, Every Which Way is that result of such syntheses. The binding of unwinding and winding again, it’s the stitching of words, pages, and spirits. It is a spell the universe hummed into two sets of ears, banged into a writing desk, bled into a pen. 

It’s not certain how the book is written. That’s to say, there’s no evidence of who’s words belong to whom. And in ambiguity lies the beauty behind Cook and hastain’s tandem poetry. Even more uncertain is the process through which they wrote the book. One imagines a string of emails or texts, one hopes for handwritten letters and astral plane meetings. Whatever the case, the result is both spooky and sensual – the fantasy of Neptune mixes with the underworld of Pluto. It’s phantasmagoric and it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s seething with instinct of both animal and spirit sources; it burgeons with doll parts, jarred hearts, and cat’s claw. Cook and hastain have gifted A Red Witch, Every Which Way and we should be grateful for it’s a mini-grimoire to which we should pray. 

Written in Acts, each section bolsters a particular set of spells that carry the reader from one destination to another – without caveats, the writers push the reader forward, ever forward towards an impending final. The final could simply be the end of the book, but it could also be death or the killing of concepts, the killing of what seems to be a safe in a society that pushes aside witches and warlocks. The final smites a secure life for one that is raw and real, one connected to both tangible and ethereal. What lies between these pages are abstract word pairings, magical visions, and shamanic notions – it’s enough to make the head spin on itself like a top, like the Earth on its axis, like this book in the palm of your hand.

RELATED: Review of Siân S. Rathore’s 'Wild Heather'

Act I feels like experiments of Mary Shelley proportions. One walks into the laboratory and notices jar after jar of poems – fairytale and Mother Goose in image and rhyme. The poems in Act I are enough to urge the Grimm Brothers to be even grimmer. There is a peeling back curtains to reveal what lies behind folklore and fables. Behold the grotesque existential questions that are sprinkled throughout Act I. Dare ask yourself, dare answer. 

Act II lifts a candle to people, place, and pieces. More fairytale references to wrestle with; plus confrontations of religious and political nature. Childhood speckles Act II and it’s as though it’s the salt to this potage. If Act II has a motif is would be transformation. Watch all the bending, bleeding, spilling, twisting, turning, and contorting on the page – between and betwixt words and line breaks. Read the poems aloud in a dark room and feel the cadence as they fall of your fat tongue. Each poem is a magic recipe, take note.

Act III summons all the ghosts and ghouls it can, as if the first two acts didn’t house enough already. Gathering the necessary tools, the writers weave death and life poems into a fabric fit enough for a conjure queen or a death goddess. Bodies as nations, as political armor, as manifested energy flow into a deep introspection as the writers touch both their own reality as well as that of fellow creatures. Here, the focus falls on mixing dream states with nightmare, fact with fiction, all four elements, plus the fifth the ether – the inner voice. 

The book finishes with a candid interview between Cook and hastain. Revealing themselves as multifaceted beings who teeter between emotional states in order to make art, and not just any macabre art, but one that satisfies the soul and the death guardians. They discuss baby birds, inhibitions, self-explorations, moods, ebb and flow, pages-by-hand, aphasia and synesthesia, promotion as pleasure, the church, and shamanism. What ends up happening in the interview is exactly what happens in the book itself – a blending of two voices so that it feels like one. Although clearly separate entities, even the interview doesn’t allow the knife to cut these two apart. It’s as though divine timing fused them for that moment where neither name nor title could break them apart. So lovely is the feeling that they were bound and protected for the duration of this book spell that one wants to go back to page one, start again, and feel the magic love and death spells drip off the page and into veins.


jacklyn janeksela is a wolf and a raven, a cluster of stars, & a direct descent of the divine feminine. she can be found @ Pank, Split Lip, Landfill, Yes Poetry, The Opiate, Vending Machine Press, Entropy; A Shadow Map (CCM) & Rooted anthology (Outpost 19); & elsewhere. she is in a post-punk band called the velblouds. her baby @ femalefilet. her chapbook, fitting a witch // hexing the stitch (The Operating System, 2017). she is an energy. find her @ hermetic hare for herbal astrology readings.

In Poetry & Prose Tags Jacklyn Janeksela, Juliet Cook, j/j hastain, Book Review, Chapbook, Poetry, Review, Witchy
← Being Non-Binary Doesn't Necessarily Mean You Are AndrogynousDepression: Fear and Loathing in My Prefrontal Cortex →
Tweet us!
Join our coven.
Follow our Instagram
  • Poetry & Prose
  • Lifestyle
  • Art
  • Music
  • Personal Essay
  • Pop Culture
  • Self Portrait
  • Interviews
  • Beauty
  • Social Issues
  • Wellness
  • Wild Words
  • Politics
  • Video Reading Series
  • Place
  • NYC
  • Flash Contest
  • Confession
  • Occult
  • Books
  • Halloween
  • Sex
LIGHT MAGIC FOR DARK TIMES  CAN BE ORDERED HERE

LIGHT MAGIC FOR DARK TIMES
CAN BE ORDERED HERE

Featured
Letters to the Dead: Shadow Writing for Grief & Release
Feb 8, 2019
Letters to the Dead: Shadow Writing for Grief & Release
Feb 8, 2019
Feb 8, 2019
How to Add Magic to Your Every Day Wellness Routine
Feb 5, 2019
How to Add Magic to Your Every Day Wellness Routine
Feb 5, 2019
Feb 5, 2019
Ritual: Writing Letters To Your Self — On Anais Nin, Journaling, and Healing
Jan 31, 2019
Ritual: Writing Letters To Your Self — On Anais Nin, Journaling, and Healing
Jan 31, 2019
Jan 31, 2019
How Rituals Can Help You Gain Confidence
Jan 17, 2019
How Rituals Can Help You Gain Confidence
Jan 17, 2019
Jan 17, 2019
SEXTING GHOSTS
marvel and moon candles
Tweets by @LunaLunaMag
TONIGHT, Feb. 13, Brooklyn/NYC: join @attheinkwell + Luna Luna for a reading on Self-Love.
.
Readings by @lisamariebasile @joannacvalente  @stephanie.athena  @erinkhar cbwilhelm @lifestudies + hosted by @anditalarico!
.
When: 7-9 p.m. WORD Bookstore, 126 Franklin Street, Brooklyn A sampling of a few of the poets who will be reading at the FEB. 13 event at @wordbookstores for @attheinkwell: @lifestudies + @joannacvalente + @lisamariebasile + @anditalarico (our lovely host) 🖤Mark your calendars! February 13, 7pm, Word in Brooklyn Want to get into the writing life? @lisamariebasile wrote a guide to starting your freelance life. All about working from home, money & logistics, ritual and mindfulness, finding clients, developing a portfolio, and negotiating your rates. 🙌🏽 Visit lunalunamagazine.com to read! Our very own @joannacvalente has some images up over at @yespoetry from their #Survivor photo series. (There are more at Luna Luna, too!). 🖤 We’re about 200 followers away from 10,000 (!!!!) over on twitter 🙌🏾 Pop over and follow us if you haven’t yet (we’re VERY active there, always having conversations and sharing work and engaging with all of you!) — were going to do a giveaway at 10,000. Thank you for the love, it means the world to us 🎉 LINK IN BIO! WANT TO CONJURE LIZZIE BORDEN? Of course you do. Preorder Lizzie, Speak by our phenom editor & poet @kaileytedesco via the lovely @whitestagpublishing. 👻 The Luna Luna crew! Stay tuned for a reading announcement in February here in NYC. 💜🖤😈 HAPPY NEW YEARS, friends and readers! 🙌🏽 The lovely @joannacvalente posted your January 2019 horoscopes today. Head over to lunalunamagazine.com to check it out. We have good vibes about this year + we hope you had a beautiful celebration!
.
PS, as Joanna says: “A lunar eclipse will occur on January 20 during a full Leo moon is going to be emotionally intense. It will stir up feelings about belonging, identity, and love. It might not be an easy moon, but it will  help you shed any unnecessary habits and relationships. Get rid of what doesn’t serve you.” Start thinking about ways you can release those things or people — and what you’d like to focus on instead. 💜🙌🏽🎉

Dark: Magical Living & Shadow Spaces RSS
Light: Poems, Prose, Essay & Idea RSS

powered by TinyLetter

  • Books
  • Confession
  • Halloween
  • Occult
  • Sex
  • Art
  • Beauty
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Music
  • NYC
  • Personal Essay
  • Poetry & Prose
  • Politics
  • Pop Culture
  • Social Issues

COPYRIGHT LUNA LUNA MAGAZINE 2018