Songs for the Devil and Death

by Hal Duncan

A primal collection of verse from the master of language, Hal Duncan, Songs for the Devil and Death touches the very heart of what it is to be human in this most inhuman world. With love and rage combined, Duncan uses words like knives to strip the flesh from the gods themselves. This poetry should not be spoken; it must be shouted, chanted, and sung in every graveyard, in every pulpit, in every home.

Genres: Poetry

172 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2011

About the author

Hal Duncan is the author of Vellum, which was a finalist for both the William H. Crawford Award and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. He is a member of the Glasgow SF Writers’ Circle. He lives in the West End of Glasgow.

Reviews

[Erzebet]

I published this book so it's a bit shady for me to officially review it. I'll just say that the reason I published it is because I recognise greatness when I read it. Poetry isn't for everyone, and Hal Duncan's poetry can be both scathing and sublime at the same time, but even if I hadn't published this, I would have bought it, read it, and loved every single word.

[Kate O'Hanlon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was unsure about whether I wanted to buy this collection. At his best I adore Hal Duncna, but sometimes he leaves me cold (or just confused) and I'd been disappointed by some of the poems he's posted on his blog. After seeing the epub version available for 99p it didn't seem like I was taking much or a risk, and now I feel like I've robbed the poor man because this collection is worth so much more than that.

From the bitter, rage tinted grief of a brother's death in Wake, to the bittersweet portrait of a relationship falling apart in Amorica by way of a defiantly lusty and joyful celebration of sex in Sonnets for Kouroi Old and New Duncan's poems cover a range of human experience and it is to the editor's credit that the order of the poems is such that somehow, by the placement of standalone transition sonnets emotional whiplash never sets in.

It's the stand alone sonnets I liked best after an initial read through, some of the longer sequences like From the Fragments of Heraklitos and The Rock of Carrion’s Kings have gone a little over my head. But then it's easy enough to like a sonnet the first time round. I open to the notion that the longer sequences may grow on me after I give them the attention they almost certainly deserve.

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious, wrenching, dirty; compelling, masterful, human. Hal Duncan howls to the depths and the skies for love found and lost, for death, for the hard work of poetry. His sonnets are an impressive example of how to work modern idiom into ancient forms. Powerful stuff. Recommended for those who like to get drunk on words.

[Belle Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've written before about my love for Duncan's work. This will be more of the same. This is a book of Duncan's verse, mostly in sonnet form, but perhaps all so (I haven't studied poetry formally since uni). Like all of his writing, it's visceral,concerned with blood and shit and semen, and I don't find it ironic at all that he encapsulates those ideas in verse form. If you know follow Duncan on social media, you'll know that he doesn't really do rules, so what maybe what *is* ironic is that he packs that all in for his verse; sure, he'll talk about things that aren't typically poetic conceits, but he does so with a strict adherence to formal rules.
My favourites: Wake, concerning the aftermath of his brother's death, with its central image of a jaguar born of despair and anguish ripping through liturgical hypocrisy (possibly, Duncan's poetic representation of himself; it's worth noting that he has a tattoo of a big, stalking cat over his heart) and Amorica, apparently to a lost lover, in which Duncan makes poetry of the daily drudgery that is the enemy of both love and the urge to create. As always, there is heft to Duncan's voice, even in his playful poetry, and you wonder what circumstances has framed his fearful symmetry. And you know some of them, because Duncan isn't shy about including autobiographical notes in his work (you can see it in Vellum in the death of Phreedom messenger's brother, Thomas; you can see it in his inclusion of Matthew Shepard in both Vellum and Escape from Hell.) But it's more than just darkness, more than just weight; there is an acceptance of it, an embracing even, that informs his voice, gives it gravitas. It's one of the things I love so much about his work.

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

An eerie resonance, like Orpheus singing.