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brennanlafaro's review
Steve Stred is an author I was familiar with before taking on his poetry. His novella Ritual was a bleak journey into the heart of darkness. I can’t even imagine what the sick son of a gun has planned for it’s follow-ups. Knowing the places Stred’s mind was capable of going, I was excited to see what he could do with the stripped down and raw snapshot that poetry offers.
Steve claims that he writes bleak, dark, horrible stuff, and you’d be hard pressed to argue with that. A lot of the works here depict a battle with depression and anxiety, not to mention a writer quite close to the edge, and the potential outcome that would occur with letting himself slip. The language is very straightforward and Stred doesn’t mince words. In the afterword, he says that in order to keep the darkness at bay, he feels a need to put it down on the page. This notion goes a way toward establishing the feeling that Stred is using poetry to capture a moment in time.
One of the first things I noticed was how lyrical Stred’s poetry is, so it was not much of a surprise to find out that some of the poems here are actually adapted song lyrics. Even some of the pieces that were not adapted for this quality. The refrains in Dim the Sun and The Harpy come to mind. While many of the pieces depict very real battles, there are also some, like Darkness and Under Moon, The Huntress that showcase a fantastical element but still retain the atmosphere that Steve’s fiction has the tendency to create
Going in to April, I had some preconceived notions of what I might be reading. Oddly enough, this book comes the closest to that expectation. Truthfully, I’m not positive I would have had the same appreciation for it if I had read it a month ago. To understand and appreciate what’s happening on the page, I had to develop a better understanding of why it was going on the page in the first place. I won’t pretend to have anything more than a very foundational view of dark poetry, but there’s enough to encourage me to continue building the house.
I received an e-copy off this book from the author for review consideration.
Steve claims that he writes bleak, dark, horrible stuff, and you’d be hard pressed to argue with that. A lot of the works here depict a battle with depression and anxiety, not to mention a writer quite close to the edge, and the potential outcome that would occur with letting himself slip. The language is very straightforward and Stred doesn’t mince words. In the afterword, he says that in order to keep the darkness at bay, he feels a need to put it down on the page. This notion goes a way toward establishing the feeling that Stred is using poetry to capture a moment in time.
One of the first things I noticed was how lyrical Stred’s poetry is, so it was not much of a surprise to find out that some of the poems here are actually adapted song lyrics. Even some of the pieces that were not adapted for this quality. The refrains in Dim the Sun and The Harpy come to mind. While many of the pieces depict very real battles, there are also some, like Darkness and Under Moon, The Huntress that showcase a fantastical element but still retain the atmosphere that Steve’s fiction has the tendency to create
Going in to April, I had some preconceived notions of what I might be reading. Oddly enough, this book comes the closest to that expectation. Truthfully, I’m not positive I would have had the same appreciation for it if I had read it a month ago. To understand and appreciate what’s happening on the page, I had to develop a better understanding of why it was going on the page in the first place. I won’t pretend to have anything more than a very foundational view of dark poetry, but there’s enough to encourage me to continue building the house.
I received an e-copy off this book from the author for review consideration.
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