Dear Ted by Kim Vodicka
Really Serious Literature (June 2022)
202 pages; $19.95 paperback
Reviewed by Anton Cancre
In 2020 Kim Vodicka gifted us with The Elvis Machine, one of the most compelling, and honest collections of the year. This time, she is focusing on Ted Bundy. It would be easy to go with straight depictions of the murders. Instead, Kim pictures herself as both the fangirl obsessed with Bundy and as his victim. She delves deep into the squishy desire to be both a dehumanized thing of flesh to be used and an object of adoration.
It all starts with love without mutuality. Just predation and the prey begging to be needed as they are devoured. They’re witty, but they cut a bit too deep for comfort. She then dives into the mania of worship and supplication. As the reader, I could feel myself choking on the bile she leaves festering in the sun for a culture that teaches such things as a matter of course.
Kim’s work here is shocking, brash and aggressive. It is as hardcore as any horror out there and is a collection that stands face to face with Wrath James White’s If You Died Tomorrow I would Eat Your Corpse. This is one hell of a poetry collection, folks.
