sun eater

by Dre Levant

"sun eater is a reminder from dre levant to bathe in sunlight like a cat on a porch. levant manages to weave light, love, hope, and the thread of darker times, into a blanket he wraps you in. sun eater is the optimistic voice of a resilient veteran of the past telling you that it's okay to go outside and play. levant's technical brilliance shines through in the tender verses, breathtakingly honest and heartbreakingly hopeful. levant asks if you can bottle the sun, and then offers you a drink of celestial forever. The warmth of levant's light is felt in every line, and it feels like summer."



-Ozzy Welch, author of Toothache (Kith Books '24) and D.I.Y. BUTCH (Backroom Poetry, '23)

Genres: Poetry

46 pages, Paperback

Published April 10, 2024

Reviews

[Kerry]

Sun Eater by Dre Levan, published through Querencia Press in 2024, is a collection of poetry with a cover of smoked cigarettes, offers a bit less than fifty pages of measured words and powerful introspection. With a strong sense of color “...All the splatter-fire painted the same color as your heart…” and titles that bleed into one another, “This is what it is to be aglow…” and “...let yourself be a little kinder to your own skin…” Recurring urban imagery includes the underworld and fire, graves, worn edges, faded pages, and tears that reveal stories. Love and the cosmos are invoked, and the author proclaims, “I just ache like sunshine aches for shadow.” Some of the works read like a song, and my tongue wanted to dance over the words. Alice and wonderland blink into the words like childhood watching a life maturing, though even in the most melancholy of these works, hope sparkles like a celestial spark.

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This chapbook was insubstantial. The lack of capitalization and the use of parentheticals and line breaks felt unmotivated, more like an affected style than a genuine artistic choice. Some of the lines have potential, the central metaphor of light and color is expounded on thoroughly throughout the collection and all of the poems pair well with each other. It’s just a shame that the formatting and presentation is just so busy and overwrought it distracts from the poetry and makes it weaker.

[silas denver melvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

not much that stuck with me. just did not feel like a strong collection. formatting and layout felt distracting rather than stylistic, which is to say the formatting did not enhance the poems directly

[Emi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book as a meal: My meal today was a cigarette, and I kept it in my mouth after it burned out

The book left me: Reflecting on my teenage years and the problematic relationships I had


Why did this call out to me? 

Something about the cover just screamed "you will relate to his, you will be depressed by this, but you will enjoy it"


Pick-up-able? Put-down-able? 

Pick-up-able, I simply swalled the whole book in maybe 20 minutes


Progression? 

Improves, it started somewhat depressing, but became optimistic the further I went. At least thats how I read it


Issues:

Formatting migh be a little jarring and hard to read


Good things: 

Diverse selection

Got me feeling and thinking from poem #1


How did it feel to read? 

I am a teenager again, I am with my first love, I am not happy in this relationship, but it will get better eventually ...right? 


What mood would I read this in? 

I am at the end of a depressive episode, and this might either make it worse or better, but we aim for better


Where does this fall in my tier list ranking? 

This is more so a B, simply becasue it is a little short and also it awoke memories I thought I had buried a long time ago


Favorite poems: 

Your Bodies

pretty places

//holyhome

invocation

[Romy Rhoads Ewing · Rating 5 out of 5]

i really enjoyed this!! the tone is balanced so beautifully!! the poems themselves are so alive and the theme only gets stronger the deeper you go. a voice to watch for sure. small press is the fuckin future <3

[Billie Sainwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his book the Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker artfully spends the length of the novel in the amber of a single elevator ride.

Dre Levant here accomplishes a similarly miraculous magic trick by imploding the complexities and marvels of the infinite within the dying-star dense feeling of being spoken to like an equal by someone who feels impossibly cool. There’s a half-pipe grinding fuck-your-kneepads nihilism to Dre’s verse matched only by its stick-the-landing moments of blood-knuckled joy.

Go to a party you didn’t want to go to after your antidepressants have run out, sulk on the porch, and accept your first cigarette from the one person you’ve always been too shy to say you’re in love with.

Or read this book.

It’s the same feeling.

[Charley Thomasin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I quite love some of these poems, and there's a lot of lines throughout this collection that I really like. I think there was just a little bit that went way over my head, and a fair bit of the formatting tripped me up (this is absolutely at least in part because of the way my own brain works in general, and the fact that I find it hard to read a regularly formatted sentence in a typical novel at times). Overall, probably just not entirely for me (and my glitchy brain), but I was still able to appreciate certain pieces and lines and even motifs.

[Gabriel Noel · Rating 3 out of 5]

ARC given by NetGalley for Honest Review

Beautiful metaphor clashes with near inscrutable form in "sun eater." Levant has a way with symbolism and style but the form and verse can be off-putting for new or casual poetry readers. Despite that, the collection boasts hopefulness and resilience in a world that can feel dark. Worth the read if you like this style.

My favorite poems are: "and what is violet", "//holyhome", "under the bridge", and "a lily is a paradox."

[Elizabeth Sanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

This poetry collection had some evocative imagery, particularly with graffiti, color, and light. I liked “//holyhome,” “under the bridge,” and “sun eater” the most. They had the biggest impact on me and left me thinking.

However, I found most of the other poems vague and somewhat repetitive in the imagery used. I usually rate poetry collections by how many poems I enjoyed or felt were strong, and there were just too few in this collection for me to recommend it.