"In a sea of mimics, this poet is an original voice." -- Doug Holder, Ibbetson Street Press
"From the opener, "Warsaw Ghetto," a series of personal, powerful statements of identity by people involved in the struggle for individual freedom and human dignity from several episodes in history, to the devilishly inventive pair of poems that follow it ("Dancing With The Devil," in which the speaker declares that "I love dancing with someone who can really lead"; and "How To Meet And Dance With Your Death," a matter of fact how-to recipe for finding your destiny through excess), to the more lyrical work of "Mapping" and "He follows her...," there is something for everyone here, and Shmailo reveals herself here as a poet of great scope and skill...Throughout this album, Larissa Shmailo consistently delivers on the promise of poetry as an oral art form. Although I can imagine that the pieces included herein would work well on page (and would love to see more than a few of these, so I could read them as well), this is a testament to how well a poetry CD can work with careful attention to the details of the production. That the poetry itself is as strong as it is is the most obvious reason that Exorcism is as good as it is.---Tony Brown, Got Poetry?
"Shmailo reads with so much intensity, intonation, energy, in velvety and sensual voice, that to not hear this would be a missed experience....Shmailo is intense. She can shock, she can tickle, she can entrance. Shmailo poetizes devils with the same skill as she weaves words around God and Magdalene. Her poetry is as lushly sensual as it is cutting to the bone. This is about love and pain, birth and rebirth, fields of magnolias, and surviving the Warsaw ghetto... The slap of shock is appropriate. This is not merely strong performance, it is also strong in substance."---Zinta Aistars, The Smoking Poet
"Larissa Shmailo does not think small. On Exorcism, she is trying to do nothing less than exorcise the demons of human evil...While this is the overarching theme of the Exorcism (and it is, for the most part, a powerful and effective theme), it is not all that is going on on this CD. There are a number of individually powerful poems here, such as “The Gospel According to Magdalene,†“Bloom,†and “Abortion Hallucination.†They all fit, some tightly, some loosely, into the larger theme, but also stand well on their own."
---G. Murray Thomas, Poetix
" The whole CD digs, though, bringing forth fiery, unorthodox, visceral imagery of the Devil and Magdalena, lovers and torturers and survivors. She crafts breath, rhythm, and rhyme, with a relaxed and dancerly demeanor and natural authority. Subtle music accompaniment and vocal multitracking. Highly recommended." --- Anne Elliott, Ass Backwards
EXORCISM is now available on iTunes, Amazon, at CDBaby.com (search Exorcism or go to my page at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/shmailo2), www.thelostbookshelf.com, at The St. Mark's Bookshop in New York City, Target online, and other stores.
EXORCISM is Larissa Shmailo's second CD. Larissa has been published in Fulcrum, Drunken Boat, About: Poetry, Rattapallax, Big Bridge, Naropa's We, Lungfull!, MiPoesias, and many other publications. Her first poetry CD, The No-Net World, has been heard around the world. Larissa has received Critic's Picks notices for her readings and radio appearances from the New York Times, the Village Voice, Maud Newton, and Time Out magazine.
Larissa translated the Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun which was performed at the first Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and internationally; a DVD of the original English-language production is part of the collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. She recently contributed translations to the noted anthology from Dalkey Archive Press, Contemporary Russian Poetry.
Larissa is public coordinator for the acclaimed annual journal Fulcrum and is proud to be a director of TWiN Poetry (myspace.com/twinpoetry) and TWiN East Coast, informal collectives of over 10,000 spoken word artists and their listeners. Larissa's chapbook, A Cure for Suicide, is now available from Cervena Barva Press. Watch this space for news of the new CD, Exorcism.
