A box of books with primary and navy blue covers lies open on a rug. The image on the book shows a tattooed shoulder with an image of DNA.

MONSTER is a series of meditations on caregiving in poetry and lyric prose as a mother adapts to her son’s disabilities and complex needs: her wrestling match with caregiving’s rigors, the biases of ableism, and her growing understanding of science. Stone seeks to subvert conventional tropes about Frankenstein and its monster—that the beings we create are never monsters, but their creators may become so themselves if they fail their children. This, Stone believes, is Mary Shelley’s original message: those who refuse caregiving and its responsibilities are immoral, even doomed.

The root of the word “monster” is the Latin verb “monere” (to warn) and “monstrum” (portent, prodigy, among others). Monsters are often depicted as warnings, but they also, paradoxically, induce awe—something extraordinary or amazing, in usage dating back to the 18th century.

Likewise, humanity's genetic fabric is monstrous—purposefully shape-shifting and awesome in its effects as it fulfills its evolutionary purpose, to make each of us different, diverse, unique. MONSTER was issued in 2016 by Phoenicia Publishing, an independent press based in Montreal.

PRAISE FOR MONSTER

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Photo: B. Farbo

A Middlebury Magazine Fall 2017 editors' pick, "Weaving poetry, essays, and stories in a moving and intelligent voice, Jeneva Burroughs Stone ’86 draws us in to the difficult yet poignant life she has taking care of her disabled son. Part meditation, part intellectual observation, and full of love, her story not only reflects what it means to be family but what it means to be human."

Eleanor Wilner (Tourist in Hell, 2010, & six other books; MacArthur Fellowship, 1991): "Interpreter of 'the kid behind the curtain of my voice,' the passionate intellect of Jeneva Stone drives these mesmerizing reflections--memoir, meditation, original creation--when 'what happens breaks covenant with every explanation in its path,' as she watches 'a world shatter like ice.' These pages astonish with their continual inquiry, their candor, their sophisticated knowledge of science and literature, their metaphoric accrual of meanings--astonishing, the forms that love and brilliance can conjure out of chaos."

Sarah Manguso (Ongoingness, 2015; The Two Kinds of Decay, 2008; Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellowship, 2007):"Stone begins, 'I fear love will be the force that breaks me.' It is, and it does, and she shows us what it is like to continue after that breakage. Her roving mind processes scientific research, the work of other writers, and the events of her days, and makes of these raw materials a 'monstrous' book of verse and prose, a testament to broken continuance. Everyone who is interested in life should bear witness to Stone's searching and scrupulous report on her son, sentenced by a genetic mutation to a life of extreme constraint, a life of almost pure being. It is the very definition of love."

Elizabeth Aquino (Hope for a Sea Change, 2014): "Jeneva Burroughs Stone's 'Monster' does what seems impossible--weaves together the threads of creating and caring for a child with significant disabilities with those of poetry, intricate intellectual observation and, above all, love and wonder for what is wrought."


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