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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
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    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
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Book Review: Kristine Ong Muslim’s Meditations of a Beast

Kristine Ong Muslim
Meditations of a Beast
Cornerstone Press, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9668488-3-0 
$12.95
paperback
​


Kristine Ong Muslim  is the author of eight books of fiction and poetry: Age of Blight, Butterfly Dream, Meditations of a Beast, Black Arcadia, Lifeboat, Grim Series, We Bury the Landscape, and A Roomful of Machines. Her short story collection, Age of Blight, was one of the best books of 2016 according to the Chicago Review of Books, while her poetry collection, Grim Series, was included in the preliminary ballot of the Horror Writers Association’s 2012 Bram Stoker Award for Poetry and was twice nominated for the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Elgin Award. She serves as the poetry editor of LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, a literary journal published in Singapore, and she has been widely published in magazines and anthologies across the globe. She grew up and continues to live in the rural southern Philippines. 
​


Review



































A Review of Kristine Ong Muslim’s Meditations of a Beast by R. E. Steele
 
​Kristine Ong Muslim’s book, Meditations of a Beast, is a ghostly revelation of what it means to experience disparity in human emotions. She exhibits this with her use of duality in imagery and meaning. Muslim transforms reader’s expectations by blurring the lines between a clinical and fictitious perspective. Writer Ted Mathys and painter Max Ernst are reflected in Muslim’s collection, concretizing this idea that more is happening beyond the surface.
 
Muslim creates a gorgeous dichotomy between the known and the unknown. She takes facts and knowledge, and pits them against more ambiguous concepts. Poetry on its own already creates a dual purpose – to read it because it exists and to break it down to understand its meaning. In “The Maze”, she develops duality by referencing the underground tunnels in Gortyn Crete and relates it to the Buddhist principle of impermanence, which marks the stages of existence. The poem describes how life is in a constant fluctuation of being. This interwoven style creates genuine and thought-provoking pieces.
…head to the ruins of Gortyn Crete…Then you will know impertinence…There is no way out of this maze…It is only the rickety harbor/looking strange in the daylight that lifts the mist.
In the context of the piece, readers explore the underground tunnels used during WWII as a shelter from war underneath the Church of St. Agios Dimitrios. Simultaneously, they are also immersed in the concept that the tunnels are part of a mythological Labyrinth of Crete. The life that is given in this piece is cyclical; it continues to exist in the confines of reality as well as the realm of fantasy.
 
Fantasy has the capacity to redefine how we look at reality as well. Muslim uses Asian folklore to explore how human emotions become enmeshed in cultures. She takes the art of storytelling and uses that to give us a glance into individual demons that may come upon people to answer a call to loneliness or to sate a need for revenge.
…the mogwai snips the thread preventing you from being reborn into yet another lifetime of suffering. The monks down the street call her Mara. She reeks of the swamp of your youth, the mangrove swamp where you drowned the ones you lured, who had to die.
It is haunting that Muslim uses demons to portray these emotions. Demons are symbolic for torture, but she conveys the fears that the demons possess rather than the fears a person confronts when faced by such a creature. Readers are afraid of what the demon is capable of whilst sympathizing with the agony the demon is tortured with. However in pieces such as, “The Ghosts of Sailors”, anguish is presented as more simplistic. “Swell with us in the sea of pain.” As a collection, Muslim’s work remains a chilling, awe-inspiring insight into the capacity for human despair.
 
Muslim collapses the barriers between reality and fantasy. Her remarkable ability to deviate from traditional storytelling to an analytical look at human emotion demonstrates her own unique insight of the world. Muslim’s writing lingers in the imagination of the unknown.


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R.E. Steele is a Lewis University graduate, who majored in English with a focus in Creative and Professional Writing, alongside a minor in Chinese. She currently serves as the Book Reviews Editor for Jet Fuel Review. Some of her own writing has been published in the spring 2015 issue of the Windows Fine Arts Magazine. When she has a few moments to herself, she kicks back with a craft beer and has a Netflix binging marathon. Some of her favorites include X-Files, Doctor Who, Orange is the New Black, Californication, and American Horror Story.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Masthead
  • Submit
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Submit Here
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Book Reviews
  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022