Thomas Wiloch (1953–2008)

While I didn't enjoy Screaming in Code nearly as much as Wiloch's earlier volume, Mr. Templeton's Toyshop, I still count myself a big fan of his unique prose poems. While short and small in number, the pieces in Screaming in Code are throughly entertaining and thought-provoking, and have an astonishing ability to seed wild images in the readers' mind. For me as a reader, these seeds can't help but prompt the creation of new mental narratives that extend upon the bare essentials that Wiloch has offered as a rich starting point. I still think that Mr. Templeton's Toyshop is much the superior work, but Wiloch's voice is so throughly that he's always worth reading, even in a slightly lesser collection such as this one.… (meer)