A review of The Haunting by Cate Peebles – Compulsive Reader

Reviewed by Emma Desserault

The Haunting
by Cate Peebles
Tupelo Press
January 2025, 61 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1961209220

The Haunting by Cate Peebles is a genre-bending, intertextual piece that seeks to explore the intersection of horror and feminism. This review examines how Peebles uses intertextuality, structure, and imagery to expand the boundaries of the horror genre, while also acknowledging the moments where the collection’s ambitious nature occasionally fragments in its cohesiveness. Ultimately, this review argues that The Haunting is a bold, feminist reinvention of the horror genre, even as its expansiveness is occasionally strained.

The Haunting takes the horror genre to new heights. One of the collection’s strengths is its rich intertexuality. Peebles draws on foundational texts of the genre, including Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, while also incorporating more contemporary works such as Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Roman Polanski’s film adaptation of Rosemary’s Baby; however, The Haunting does not use these works simply as scaffolding, Peebles uses them as fertile soil in which to cultivate new life. Her engagement with these texts is both reverent and transformative, allowing her to reimagine classic horror tropes while pushing the genre in new, unexpected directions.

The Haunting opens with the poem “Note Stitched Above the Monster’s Eye,” immediately signaling Peebles’ deep engagement with Shelley’s Frankenstein. This opening poem borrows words directly from Shelley’s novel, grounding Peebles work in the rich soil of the Promethian horror story. Throughout the collection, the “Note Stitched” series reappears with notes being stitched inside the monster’s mouth, across the monster’s cheek, beneath the monster’s ribs, and so on. Peebles’ innovative use of dashes between words not only visually mimics stitches on the page but also forces the reader to slow and savor the words, echoing the painstaking process of assembling a body from disparate parts.

The erasure poems taken from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights do more than merely erase—they transform. By removing words from Brontë’s original text, Peebles crafts new poems that emerge from the gaps, demonstrating that there is a kind of poetry in absence. Peebles selects her words tentatively, shaping the poem and its absence with care. The different erasure poems fall, flow, and freeze, capturing isolated moments of Brontë’s haunting language and recontextualizing them into sparse fragments that preserve the eerie, uncanny nature of Brontë’s original work. Peebles’ erasure poem’s highlight the ways in which absence itself can generate new ghosts, voices, and hauntings.

“The Worm,” another repeated motif throughout the collection, also draws upon structure to invoke meaning. The text of the poems is slender and visually reminiscent of a worm upon a page. When repeated throughout the piece, instead of being referred to as “The Worm Part II,” Peebles opts for the tilde symbol (~), a clever nod to the worm’s physical form. Peebles draws a direct comparison between the worm and the very symbols that structure our writing, suggesting that language itself can be as slippery and pervasive as a worm.. The first worm poem opens with the line: “The worm was the first thing on earth,” a striking assertion that positions the worm as a primordial figure, both a creator and a destroyer. The worm may not have come first, but Peebles reminds us that it has not disappeared, as its presence lingers, a reminder of what persists beneath the surface. The worm is both a text and a subtext, a symbol and structure, showcasing that Peebles is a master of the craft, as she uses every element of the page to evoke meaning.

The Haunting seeks to explore “the anxieties of ancestral and artistic, inheritance, rage, transformation, motherhood, maternal ambivalence, and the drive to create.” This is no small feat, it’s Sisyphian, yet Peebles tackles each of these ideas head-on, employing various tools to pick apart, deconstruct, and reconstruct the very fabric of these anxieties. The collection as a whole reads like both a coming-of-age and a coming-of-rage narrative, which is particularly evident in early poems like “Prom Night,” which captures the raw horror and vulnerability associated with teenage girlhood. The anxieties of the feminine are not neatly resolved throughout the work, but are given space to breath, seethe, to question, and to create. Nowhere is this more apparent than in “The American Way of Death I,” when Peebles writes, “I will make you carry me home/ and blame my ancestors for everything/ I don’t like about myself.” Here, Peebles refuses to tidy up the messy inheritance of identity, motherhood, and rage; instead, she presents it as a stark fact.

While much of this collection is a triumph, it is not without its faults. The piece toggles between foggy, Victorian moors; ancient, godlike worms; Southern Gothic revenge plots; and coming-of-age Americana. At times, these disparate images, ideas, and literary styles feel at odds with one another, pulling the reader in different directions. The ancient, primordial hauntings drawn from Brontë and Shelley occasionally clash with more modern, American horror tropes evoked by films like Carrie and The American Way of Death. These tensions may leave readers feeling somewhat disoriented, as if reading two collections at once; yet, perhaps this is precisely the effect Peebles seeks to create: a sense of disjointedness that mirrors the patchwork, stitched-togetherness of the horror genre itself. Still, one might wonder whether a more focused approach could have yielded a more cohesive collection.

When working on a collection that relies so heavily on intertextuality, less is often more. The Haunting draws upon over twenty different pieces of media, ranging from nineteenth century novels to contemporary horror films. While many of these allusions feel at home, the sheer volume an at times feel overwhelming. Peebles’ ambition to capture the full spectrum of what it means to be haunted is admirable, but sometimes, attempting to encompass every possible reference dilutes the potency of the haunting itself. By tightening up her references, Peebles would allow her core themes to emerge more powerfully and memorably.

Peebles’ ability to capture the essence of famous works of horror literature and film in her poetry is truly unmatched. Taking on Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, Steven King, and other horror creators, and using their work as fertile ground for her own voice, is a task few poets could manage with such confidence and skill. Peebles proves herself more than up to the challenge, transforming these canonical “bibles of horror” into living, breathing poems that both honor and transform their sources. Peebles transforms the page into a haunted landscape where text, grammar symbols, and even blank space become active participants in the poem’s meaning. The use of bingo cards, for example, invites readers to read in a non-linear fashion, causing disorientation and confusion that mirrors the psychological state of horror. Despite the occasional disjointedness and the challenge of balancing such a variety of intertexts, The Haunting is a remarkable achievement. It is a testament to Peebles’ ingenuity, her deep knowledge and reverence of the horror genre, and her fearless experimentation. Peebles shows readers that horror is not confined to dark woods or haunted hallways; it is woven into the very fabric of language. The Haunting reminds us that the best horror, and the best poetry, always lingers.

About the reviewer: Emma Desserault is a senior at Tufts University studying English and Film and Media Studies. Originally from Ketchum, Idaho, Emma is passionate about helping readers find stories that inspire empathy, connection, and a lifelong love of reading.