What do you think?
Rate this book
Surrealities
"Reflect that science fiction owes its greatest unpaid debt to surrealism, for suspending our disbelief in an invented future works best when our critical faculties are distracted and engaged by images from the unconscious. Now comes science fiction poetry's greatest practitioner, Bruce Boston, to repay a part of this debt in Surrealities, which is at once an introduction to the uninitiated, a handbook for the journeyman seeking to gain mastery, and an intoxication to those of us who fancy ourselves connoisseurs of the strange." - Lee Ballentine, author of Dream Protocols
"Boston utterly transcends convention, highlighting many aspects of human experience inaccessible through the use of more traditional methods. Reading these poems is like embarking upon a trek through 'the depths of dreams,' the 'infrastructure' of the soul itself! I celebrate the release of this work, a collection to which I shall, no doubt, frequently return." - John Amen, author of At the Threshold of Alchemy
"Here, the surreal beauty of a muscular mind, poems like evil flowers, cachinnating snow monkeys, blue-eyed chateaus, scarlet snails. Here, all the boats are drunk, all the architecture soft and hairy, all the nights lit by giraffe fire, butterfly blaze. Here, Bruce Boston - investigating an horizon first mapped by Celan and Eluard, Tanguy and Tanning - rummages through each tree's drawer, behind perception's door, to find disturbing but strangely familiar shapes for language, longing, and love." - Bryan D. Dietrich, author of Universal Monsters
"At times furious in its assault on the senses. At times curious in its nonchalance. This vein of poetics suits Boston oh so well. Like when he takes flight from a straight narrative thread and employs his vocabulary to high and exigent purposes, as in 'The Lateral Eclipse of Bound Sunsets.' And when he makes the mystery melancholy, as in 'Stray Acquisitions.' A master class on the motive/emotive powers of language." - Robert Frazier, author of The Daily Chernobyl
"I read this collection straight off and loved it. If you like your poetry with a strong taste of the weird, the unusual and over-the-edge bizarre, you have to read this book." - Alan Catlin, author of The Insomniac's Gift
"Boston utterly transcends convention, highlighting many aspects of human experience inaccessible through the use of more traditional methods. Reading these poems is like embarking upon a trek through 'the depths of dreams,' the 'infrastructure' of the soul itself! I celebrate the release of this work, a collection to which I shall, no doubt, frequently return." - John Amen, author of At the Threshold of Alchemy
"Here, the surreal beauty of a muscular mind, poems like evil flowers, cachinnating snow monkeys, blue-eyed chateaus, scarlet snails. Here, all the boats are drunk, all the architecture soft and hairy, all the nights lit by giraffe fire, butterfly blaze. Here, Bruce Boston - investigating an horizon first mapped by Celan and Eluard, Tanguy and Tanning - rummages through each tree's drawer, behind perception's door, to find disturbing but strangely familiar shapes for language, longing, and love." - Bryan D. Dietrich, author of Universal Monsters
"At times furious in its assault on the senses. At times curious in its nonchalance. This vein of poetics suits Boston oh so well. Like when he takes flight from a straight narrative thread and employs his vocabulary to high and exigent purposes, as in 'The Lateral Eclipse of Bound Sunsets.' And when he makes the mystery melancholy, as in 'Stray Acquisitions.' A master class on the motive/emotive powers of language." - Robert Frazier, author of The Daily Chernobyl
"I read this collection straight off and loved it. If you like your poetry with a strong taste of the weird, the unusual and over-the-edge bizarre, you have to read this book." - Alan Catlin, author of The Insomniac's Gift
- GenresPoetry
66 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2011
1 person is currently reading
215 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Boston
356 books118 followersI've published more than sixty books and chapbooks, including the novels Stained Glass Rain and the best-of fiction collection Masque of Dreams. My work ranges from broad humor to literary surrealism, with many stops along the way for science fiction, fantasy, and horror. My novel The Guardener's Tale (Sam's Dot, 2007) was a Bram Stoker Award Finailist and a Prometheus Award Nominee. My stories and poems have appeared in hundreds of publications, including Asimov's SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Nebula Awards Showcase, and received a number of awards, most notably, a Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov's Readers' Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. For more information, please visit my website at http://www.bruceboston.com/
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 21, 2011
In the first issue of Kaleidotrope Magazine in a review of a bizzaro book, the critic Martin Earl offered what for me was the best take on surrealism in literature: “surrealism is confusing but ultimately understandable.”
This is true for Bruce Boston’s Surrealities, a 64-page book of poems and illustrations (Boston’s rendition of Rorschach inkblots) lending stunning insight on the human condition: the violence (Two Nightstands Attacking a Cello), the humdrum (A Life in the Day Of), the obsessive-compulsiveness (Surreal Wish List), and the exquisite madness (Before the Vilification of Hypnagogic Birth).
Surrealities is replete with ekphrastic references. In “Portrait of My Dead Brother with Burning Wing:”
An immature boy in a sailor suit
refuses to leave
the beaches of Port Ligat.
The great masturbator
considers the obscene history
of the Third Reich.
In “Revealing Their Eyes:”
reveal sunflower
burning giraffe
eyes.
Music -- possibly because its form is amorphous, its influence is intuitive, and thus the most powerful representation of the surreal -- is a common element in this collection. This music comes in many forms: from static to the cacophony of fear and panic.
The foreboding “Lizard and Wind,” the best piece in the book, tells of:
The lizards were everywhere
and so was the wind.
There was no way you could
keep either of them out
that hard spring.
All in all, Surrealities is a very important contribution to the literature of the surreal.
This is true for Bruce Boston’s Surrealities, a 64-page book of poems and illustrations (Boston’s rendition of Rorschach inkblots) lending stunning insight on the human condition: the violence (Two Nightstands Attacking a Cello), the humdrum (A Life in the Day Of), the obsessive-compulsiveness (Surreal Wish List), and the exquisite madness (Before the Vilification of Hypnagogic Birth).
Surrealities is replete with ekphrastic references. In “Portrait of My Dead Brother with Burning Wing:”
An immature boy in a sailor suit
refuses to leave
the beaches of Port Ligat.
The great masturbator
considers the obscene history
of the Third Reich.
In “Revealing Their Eyes:”
reveal sunflower
burning giraffe
eyes.
Music -- possibly because its form is amorphous, its influence is intuitive, and thus the most powerful representation of the surreal -- is a common element in this collection. This music comes in many forms: from static to the cacophony of fear and panic.
The foreboding “Lizard and Wind,” the best piece in the book, tells of:
The lizards were everywhere
and so was the wind.
There was no way you could
keep either of them out
that hard spring.
All in all, Surrealities is a very important contribution to the literature of the surreal.
September 26, 2011
Wonderfully Daliesque. Both challenging and thought-provoking, this collection of poems is a must read for anyone who enjoys the surreal.
October 16, 2012
Really different. I think Boston uses the genre to convey his imagination quite well.
September 20, 2019
An excellent collection of modern surrealist poetry.
December 6, 2024
Boston is to poetry what Dali was to painting. Surrealities would be a great introduction for anyone to this kind of speculative poetry, but it can also be enjoyed even more by aficionados.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews