Erick Hofstatter seems to have established himself at Aqueduct Press because he provided book #95 in their 'Conversation Pieces' series and yet he's back with #97. He's a Czech poet living in the UK and he clearly likes tying his free poetry to the past. However, 'Stone Martyrs' was built from legends, while 'Bankrupting Sky Banks' is built from history, namely the infamous Borgias back in the 15th and 16th centuries. They were well-known patrons of the arts but they also indulged in a heady mix of adultery, incest and murder, which isn't great for any family but especially not for a family that included two popes and at least one saint.

At least, I assume he's focused on the Borgias, partly because it's obvious and partly because the name is included in the back cover blurb, but that also uses the words "inspired by", which means that these poetic hints aren't gospel and we can't directly translate the various narrators to any of the actual Borgias. Maybe we're set during the papacy of Alexander VI, or Rodrigo Borgia, and Riccardo is really Cesar Borgia and his daughter Alessia the real Lucrezia. However, not all of the details gel so maybe not. Maybe it's all just inspiration and the whole bunch are blurred together into a mere four characters.

Like in 'Stone Martyrs', Hofstatter's poetry is presented as unsent messages, though who each of the characters is thinking of is sometimes up for debate. Certainly, Massimo is mostly talking to a lover who's surely his sister Alessia, while Alessia sometimes talks to him in return but more often her father Riccardo. I'm not sure who Nico is talking to but Riccardo is happy to talk to anyone he can control. It's a lot easier to see what drives the characters.

For instance, Massimo is crude and blasphemous. He's jealous of her sister's bathwater because it touched her naked body, so he drank it. Everything is about sex and God and Alessia is both to him, even though he's a cardinal. He doesn't want to be but his father decreed it and it was so. "He put the wrong son in cloth", Massimo believes, and "the cardinal robes got too heavy when damnation became your name". Does Alessia take her own life by poison here? If so, then Massimo sees what remains behind as holy relics. Who knows what he's going to do with those.

Riccardo isn't much different, using some of the same crudities in his own thoughts about sex but he's a manipulator who has to be in charge of everything, even if he isn't the pope. He's the power behind the throne or, at least, he believes he is. It's Riccardo who gives us an explanation of the cryptic title, which I presume speaks to morality and heaven. Hofstatter is vaguer here about the exploits of Riccardo, but I presume he kills someone.

Alessia doesn't get as much time as I'd have expected and she's mostly focused on abject hate for her father. She feels like a slave because of his requirements, which is presumably why she's drawn to suicide. That leaves Nico, the other son, and his section is vaguer still, before Alessia wraps the book up, oddly given that I think she's dead at this point. Does that mean that I prefer the earlier sections, especially Massimo's, which are as vibrant and alive as they are crude and blasphemous? Maybe. I certainly felt like I understood more, but he's a simpler character, fundamentally driven by one primal urge.

Certainly I didn't like this as much as I did 'Stone Martyrs'. That was cryptic too, but it felt deeper and more immersive. I fell into a rabbit hole with that book but I'd already fallen into the stories that gradually emerged from the messages of soldiers trapped for centuries in standing stones. I certainly looked up the Borgias after reading this, but it's a much looser connection and I wasn't finding any direct correlation so I avoided another rabbit hole.

What's more, I found the choice of vocabulary mixed. The poetry is often searing and insightful, a traditional poet's employment of expected words in unexpected ways. Hofstatter's good at that. What I was more frustrated by was his usage of modern language in a historical context. That felt anomalous and only served to pull me back from the characters. There's also a lot of odd wordplay that feels clumsy in comparison to the choice of vocabulary and phrasing, which is often glorious.

For instance, there's a page in Nico's section that's searing. "The scars on my liver look like you" is the best line but the whole page is excellent. "Time is a bartender that dilutes our feelings." Yes, I like this a lot. However, only a few pages on, he asks us to buy into "stability or sta-build-ity" and "you're a rapier or RAPE-ier". That's just hammering points home that weren't even great points to begin with. I'll take those scars any day and that means that 'Stone Martyrs' wins out over this volume without even trying hard. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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