THE TRUE STORY OF COWBOY HAT AND INGÉNUE (Cinnamon Press/Liquorice Fish 2018)
ISBN: 9781911540038
In a landscape scarred by conflict, two women begin a quest for a lost child and a lost world of peace. Bound together by love and acceptance, their story and path interweave with fellow outcasts — people like the ever-suave Dame Blanche, Sister Asunta, martial artist and magician, Master Wu Wu, and the lost soul, Tulip — but whether peace is simply the end of war or something deeper is something they must discover for themselves.
A haunting tale, told in a series of visionary prose poems, The True Story of Cowboy Hat & Ingénue interweaves memory and yearning to ask questions that reflect on our past and, disturbingly, on our futures.
Praise for The True Story of Cowboy Hat and Ingénue
Moniza Alvi:
The True Story of Cowboy Hat and Ingénue crosses boundaries, including those of sexual identity, cultures and language. There’s eroticism and adventure here, as well as conflict and sharp pain. Maria Jastrzębska excels at the ‘borderline’ form of the prose poem and with these linked pieces it’s as if she presents us with an epic in a small space. To read it is to be challenged as well as enchanted.
Gregory Woods:
A grittily tender romance that sparks a rare kind of pleasure: the lush austerity of its language has you both sumptuously satisfied and yet longing for more.
Janet Sutherland:
The True Story of Cowboy Hat and Ingénue will remain with you long after you’ve read the final page. Set out as prologue, first, second and final parts the reader is guided through a sequence of juxtaposed prose poems. There is a central love story between Cowboy Hat and Ingénue, two women questing for a lost child, a lost world of peace in a war-torn landscape – I won’t tell you how their story ends. The prose poem form concentrates the writing – there is delight in individual pieces as well as in the whole, such as when Dame Blanche tells Ingenue how to conceal a razor blade in her mouth “The trick is to loosen the tongue so it floats like a little ship bobbing under the roof of your mouth. Open your lips. See, there’s a tiny stove on board from which smoke coils…” and in no time she is describing the breath forming rings, the rings slipping out of the mouth, the animals who were on board “ jump into the shallows round your tongue, clear the ridge of your bottom teeth, climbing over your lip”. The next prose poem in the sequence is about kisses and so one has magically loosened the tongue in the mouth. The next, after that, is a particularly difficult but powerful piece about war. Around the central story of Cowboy Hat and Ingénue roam other stories, other characters, some characters return, and we learn more about them but, as in life, some we meet only once. The writing is intense, concentrated, memorable, and meaningful. As Moniza Alvi says on the back cover “it’s as if she presents us with an epic in a small space. To read it is to be challenged as well as enchanted”.
Robert Hamberger:
The True Story of Cowboy Hat & Ingénue is an intense, engrossing read in an original form. Maria Jastrzębska’s prose poem weaves an atmospheric love story alongside sharp and moving portrayals of queer communities under threat. These stories move skilfully through the terror of a continuous war, which can’t be wholly escaped or explained. The reader never quite knows where each paragraph (or stanza) will take us, and that’s part of the book’s adventure, as each visceral detail is wonderfully evoked. With Jastrzębska’s taut and compelling language never putting a foot wrong, I was rooting for Cowboy Hat and Ingenue to make it through.
Albert Camus:
Maria Jastrzębska is a Polish/English poet who always has her finger on the pulse and here she is questioning what prose and poetry are, inserting Spanish into an English narrative as if it was second nature. But she’s also a poet of conscience and while this story in poetry may have a playful title, it starts with genocide – and the horror of war is dotted through it. Carolyn Forché is quoted at the start, which is a hint to a reader that this is going to be an uncompromising ride. However, just consider the name of one of the central characters, Ingenue, for another hint – there’s subtle humour in this lesbian romance, the writer is playing with stereotypes as well as subverting the old Hollywood wild west narrative. Tune into this humour and you’ll be delighted at the sophistication of this storytelling. Interspersed with the play are passages so lyrical that you dream.
Helen Joubert Artist & Rainbow Reader:
How to write a review that does justice to this treasure of a book? I’ve had an image of a kaleidoscope in my head since reading it. The format – paragraphs of prose/poetry – tells the story like a turn of the kaleidoscope reveals a new image. You never see the whole picture, but the pieces fall into a jewelled constellation that tantalisingly shows you part of the story, and then is gone. You never see the same picture twice, but each is a perfect shot of pleasure, wisdom, or anguish. Maria captures the illusive nature of meaning so deftly in her final image of a reflection on water “…One sigh of the wind is all it takes and everything’s gone…”
David Caddy (Tears in the Fence, 71, Spring 2020):
Maria Jastrzębska’s The True Story of Cowboy Hat and Ingénue, an absorbing sequence of prose poems following two women’s journey across the war-torn landscape in searchable rural utopia in the mould of Ed Dorn’s Gunslinger is utterly distinctive and different. The sequence dissolves conventional boundaries of time narrative in order to produce a hyper-reality of interconnected stories within a love story and an expanded range of otherness, in terms of identity, voice and languages. Cowboy Hat and Ingénue meet Dame Blanche, a giant black man, who runs the El Dorado bar, and Mercedes the brothel keeper and a host of other outcasts and victims of oppression. The range of voices and languages, the various narratives all succinctly described, are all impressive and produce an exhilarating read.