Review of Fantasy of Loving the Fantasy by Jennifer Funk

*Fantasy of Loving the Fantasy* by Jennifer Funk (2023). Published by Bull City Press.

Poetry was never intended to be a love of mine. For the longest time, despite attending a high school for writing in Baltimore, I was in deep denial that I could ever write and enjoy poetry.

When I thought of the medium, I ended up thinking that it was like the content I would read in the seventh and eighth grade, that it was boring content written by dead old white men from the 1700s. I was not interested, so I gave it a hard pass for the longest time.

My senior year, I embraced it fully, and now I’m a well-published poet doing poetry things out in the world. It’s been a love to read other people’s work, even though I mainly write fiction reviews on this blog.

I was reached out to by Bull City Press and asked if I wanted a copy of Jennifer Funk’s newest poetry collection. I had never heard of Funk, but I always love reading works by authors I’ve never heard of, so I said yes immediately. When that package arrived at my home less than a week later, I ended up digging into it that day.

Here’s my review of the collection!

An evocative poetry collection by Jennifer Funk with cutting language.

One of the details I noticed from the get-go, like so many people when picking out the books they want to read, was the girl on the cover of the book. I was absolutely fascinated in how this imagery was going to connect to the poems themselves, and when I began to read it, I began to understand it for myself. I won’t spoil what that means in this blog post, but I’ll be frank and saying that it all comes together when you get further. The collection is only sixty-four pages, but savor these poems as you go through them.

A lot of the poems contained within this book are written within the narrative style, and are crisp in their language.

The very first poem that the collections opens with is “Fantasy of Losing My Suburban Cool,” and Funk writes in it, “Don’t look at me like you’ve just come in from the fields / and aren’t I thankful you’ve arrived. Like all the men / who opens their wallets easily, you don’t know / what anything costs.” There’s a slight vindictive voice I could trace throughout the work, which I personally enjoyed when it emerged in the writing, whether direct or subtle.

I also think I enjoyed this collection a lot because of how Funk goes over the line of just using “I.” As a writer myself, something I’ve been interested in is the power of using the word “you” in a poem.

What does you mean? The reader? A person that has been scorned off-screen? For me, you has become a way to address issues about myself and removing some personal distance from the narrative, but I think Funk is doing something completely different in this collection. You definitely shifts with the context of the pome here.

With poems, I like to list the standouts for me, which were the following: “Graphic,” “Fantasy of Meaning What I Say,” “Fantasy of Loving the Fantasy,” and “Fantasy of Losing My Suburban Cool.”

Overall Thoughts

If you’re a fan of the work of Dianne Seuss (I very much got Four-Legged Girl vibes from these poems), Caroline Ebeid, or Carolyn Kizer, I think you’re going to enjoy this collection. I certainly did! I enjoyed the voice that was consistent throughout the poems, even when it wasn’t as dark as I mentioned before.

The imagery and the language is so rich in this collection, and I thought there was quite a bit to learn when it comes to how Funk uses diction. It’s definitely accessible for those who haven’t read a ton of poetry, which is much needed in this world to introduce others to the joy of poetry. Pick up a copy if you haven’t preordered or bought one already.

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