Love Has Been Liquidated, poems by John Bryan. Northeast Ohio: HobGob Press, 2012.
According to the introduction, "Love Has Been Liquidated I is part of John Bryan's five-part autobiographical masterwork: a choose-your-own-adventure role-playing prose poem." The poems address the reader (identified as "Love") and, according to the reader's reaction to the poem, the reader moves through the collection, trying to get to the end. But there are dangers: the reader can be "liquidated." Each section is also named after streets in Canberra, Australia.
Examples of prompts for reactions are, from the first poem, "Chelmno":
If you wish to play your part in making this poem and have decided to invoke the colours that we cannot see, the theoretical colours, as metaphors, as invoking the spirit of the recently deceased, as invoked from an illustration from Ebenezer Sibly's 'Astrology' 1806 Edition, then I shall meet you at Isabella Dr.
Get ready to tell people they can read "whatever they want" into our role playing poem. That it "lives its own life" and can "mean many things." - If you do not wish to play yor part, but wish to return to that body farm brothel from which your spirit floated, and from where your remains are pimped out for forensic research, then I shall meet you at Limestone Ave.
Bryan's collection is fun and engaging, while maintaining depth and relevance. He connects spiritual meaning and emotion to place, which grounds the collection in realism, while the interactive approach quickly draws the reader into the reality of the collection.
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