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Notes from the Shadow City
Dark Regions Press is excited to launch a new poetry collection from Bram Stoker Award winning poet Bruce Boston and Gary William Crawford, author of the Bram Stoker Award nominated The Shadow City. You can read more about the book and view interior images on our website at: http://www.darkregions.com/books/note...
"In Notes from the Shadow City, Crawford and Boston distill a bleak dystopian vision. Alone or together, and utilizing poetry, prose, and photographic images, they have crafted a guidebook, a Baedeker to the same outliers as chronicled by Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and Orwell, where shadows are more real than the gnomons that cast them, and the predominant colors come from the stripped-down underside of the rainbow."
--Robert Borski, author of Blood Wallah and Other Poems
"Like grim guides of the underworld, Boston and Crawford lead you into a terrifying landscape of tragedy and tyranny. At times morbid, despairing, inspiring, and hauntingly beautiful, the Shadow City etches itself into your mind with lonely, tormented characters and their tragic fates."
-Anders Monsen, Editor, Prometheus
"Boston's and Crawford's voices meld beautifully to create dark music. Notes from the Shadow City will echo in your nightmares."
-Linda D. Addison, Bram-Stoker-Award-winning author of Being Full of Light, Insubstantial
"To say that reading Notes from the Shadow City is a delight might be misleading; to say that it is unsettling, disconcerting, provocative, and remarkable is to scratch the surface of the shadows and begin to reveal the genius beneath."
--from the introduction by Michael R. Collings, author of The House beyond the Hill
"In Notes from the Shadow City, Crawford and Boston distill a bleak dystopian vision. Alone or together, and utilizing poetry, prose, and photographic images, they have crafted a guidebook, a Baedeker to the same outliers as chronicled by Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and Orwell, where shadows are more real than the gnomons that cast them, and the predominant colors come from the stripped-down underside of the rainbow."
--Robert Borski, author of Blood Wallah and Other Poems
"Like grim guides of the underworld, Boston and Crawford lead you into a terrifying landscape of tragedy and tyranny. At times morbid, despairing, inspiring, and hauntingly beautiful, the Shadow City etches itself into your mind with lonely, tormented characters and their tragic fates."
-Anders Monsen, Editor, Prometheus
"Boston's and Crawford's voices meld beautifully to create dark music. Notes from the Shadow City will echo in your nightmares."
-Linda D. Addison, Bram-Stoker-Award-winning author of Being Full of Light, Insubstantial
"To say that reading Notes from the Shadow City is a delight might be misleading; to say that it is unsettling, disconcerting, provocative, and remarkable is to scratch the surface of the shadows and begin to reveal the genius beneath."
--from the introduction by Michael R. Collings, author of The House beyond the Hill
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published September 18, 2012
115 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 21, 2013
Modern poetry is a very challenging animal. In the post-modernist wake, form, style, and function have been tossed to the wind in favor of a less structured approach. At times this can feel a bit like anarchy as I wade through it. Modern genre poetry is even more difficult as it fuses the elements of genre onto this chaotic new world. When Notes from the Shadow City came across my desk, I paused. A poetry collection from two different poets telling a story… are you confused yet?
But as I read, the light of understanding went on. Granted, Crawford and Boston took on a daunting task. They had a story to tell. Shadow City is a place, both real and unreal. It’s a mysterious world sinister monks, secret police, evil experiments, and dark souls. This could have been a novel, but the poetic form allows for a subtle exploration that captives the reader in a way a novel cannot. Poetry is about a single line or a single word used to convey a thousand thoughts. There is no narrative explanation or dialogue to define a character’s motivations. Crawford and Boston build a world on a tightrope of words and we believe. “Creatures of a hive mind” tell us more than a chapter of narrative about this dark place. It’s a place where “where songs are sung/ with the tuneless solidity/ of ancient cantos” and we hear those songs just beyond our own reality.
As a fan of the Gothic poets, modern poetry and I have not often found a comfortable place. Genre poetry has been even less satisfying as far too much of it falls into the descriptive rather than the imaginative. Notes from the Shadow City defies convention and sweeps the reader into its monstrous, haunting, lyrical bowels.
But as I read, the light of understanding went on. Granted, Crawford and Boston took on a daunting task. They had a story to tell. Shadow City is a place, both real and unreal. It’s a mysterious world sinister monks, secret police, evil experiments, and dark souls. This could have been a novel, but the poetic form allows for a subtle exploration that captives the reader in a way a novel cannot. Poetry is about a single line or a single word used to convey a thousand thoughts. There is no narrative explanation or dialogue to define a character’s motivations. Crawford and Boston build a world on a tightrope of words and we believe. “Creatures of a hive mind” tell us more than a chapter of narrative about this dark place. It’s a place where “where songs are sung/ with the tuneless solidity/ of ancient cantos” and we hear those songs just beyond our own reality.
As a fan of the Gothic poets, modern poetry and I have not often found a comfortable place. Genre poetry has been even less satisfying as far too much of it falls into the descriptive rather than the imaginative. Notes from the Shadow City defies convention and sweeps the reader into its monstrous, haunting, lyrical bowels.
June 21, 2013
WINNER OF THE GOTHIC READERS CHOICE AWARD
Sometimes we here at the Gothic Readers Book Club feel that true Gothic poetry is a dead art. No pun intended. Lord Byron and his ilk proved that verse could convey as much intensity and passion as narrative, but modern writers don't seem to feel the same. Dark poetry is in an even worse state than general poetry. Gary Crawford and Bruce Boston restored our faith. Notes from the Shadow City explores the darkest depth of an imaginary city through verse. From siren songs to pure evil to the shadows themselves, the rhythms and phrases seduce you into the underbelly. The words chill, enthrall, enchant, and horrify. Byron would be proud.
Check out our blog here!
Sometimes we here at the Gothic Readers Book Club feel that true Gothic poetry is a dead art. No pun intended. Lord Byron and his ilk proved that verse could convey as much intensity and passion as narrative, but modern writers don't seem to feel the same. Dark poetry is in an even worse state than general poetry. Gary Crawford and Bruce Boston restored our faith. Notes from the Shadow City explores the darkest depth of an imaginary city through verse. From siren songs to pure evil to the shadows themselves, the rhythms and phrases seduce you into the underbelly. The words chill, enthrall, enchant, and horrify. Byron would be proud.
Check out our blog here!
October 2, 2012
An interesting collaboration between two poets of the dark side -- Gary William Crawford is working with Bruce Boston on this one -- which winds up being more of a cycle of poems than merely a collection of them. As befits a visit to the Shadow City, the poems & prose poems in this assembly seem to turn back on themselves, cross-reference each other, & generally lead the reader down twisting back alleys into other poems.
Boston's illustrations add a skillful touch of surreality.
Boston's illustrations add a skillful touch of surreality.
March 1, 2014
Well I tried again. Guess I am really not much of a horror poetry person. There is nothing wrong with this collection of poems that are interconnected. It just didn't work for me. I will say to be fair that most of you who do really like horror poetry will probably like this collection. Enough said.
August 25, 2013
I reviewed this book as part of an extensive interview with Bruce Boston. Please go to:
http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2013/03/...
http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2013/03/...
December 12, 2014
I can appreciate and even love the most experimental poetry out there, but Bruce Boston and Gary William Crawford's "Notes From The Shadow City" makes me appreciate the bare bones of what Gothic poetry can do without need of recourse to novelty or prosodic glitter.
The poets narrate in casually horrific stanza the birth of maintenance of "The Shadow City", an abortive psychic malfeasance which may be real or imaginary--it doesn't really matter. "They made him swim in the burning lake/with his hands cut off', writes Crawford.
"In Line at the Shadow City pharmacy" by Bruce Boston describes the tremulous and suffering denizens of the iron wrought, T.S. Eliot like nightmare:
Some are bent with age.
They inch forward
on shadow walkers.
Others are obese,
their shadows blooming
like rain-swollen clouds.
Or they are terribly frail,
their shadows like sticks
that jerk and twitch."
This is a beautifully ruinous collection for fans of the *real* Gothic era in poetry. Unpretentious, more than a bit like the well-aged "City of Dreadful Night" by James Thomson.
The poets narrate in casually horrific stanza the birth of maintenance of "The Shadow City", an abortive psychic malfeasance which may be real or imaginary--it doesn't really matter. "They made him swim in the burning lake/with his hands cut off', writes Crawford.
"In Line at the Shadow City pharmacy" by Bruce Boston describes the tremulous and suffering denizens of the iron wrought, T.S. Eliot like nightmare:
Some are bent with age.
They inch forward
on shadow walkers.
Others are obese,
their shadows blooming
like rain-swollen clouds.
Or they are terribly frail,
their shadows like sticks
that jerk and twitch."
This is a beautifully ruinous collection for fans of the *real* Gothic era in poetry. Unpretentious, more than a bit like the well-aged "City of Dreadful Night" by James Thomson.
October 8, 2013
A wonderful collaboration between Gary William Crawford and Bruce Boston. The power of the poems builds across the entire collection, with each piece reinforcing and extending the starkness of the one before. Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews