Daniel Sluman's bleak brilliance in the terrible is a masterclass in the power of poetry to confront difficult subject matter with accuracy and painstaking openness. These are rigorous and exacting poems, that dare to go to some of the darkest places and speak with stark precision.
These poems may be stripped down, intense, and utterly frank, but they are not without deep reserves of sincerity and beauty. Sluman writes of the heady cocktail of being alive, where loss, love, sex, close shaves with mortality, and sharp narratives of pain and suffering are examined in concise and humane clarity.
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(@NineArchesPress, 14 November 2015, ebook, 68 pages, borrowed from @natpoetrylib via @OverDriveInc)
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This is a new poet for me. I decided to read it because I loved the cover. I had a great time reading The Terrible. I look forward to reading more to his work. The poems haunted me and I found myself recalling words and images each time I set the book aside. Poetry, like fiction is very subjective and we all have our particular tastes. The poems in this impressive collection are the kind I enjoy the most, brutal, honest and full of everything it means to be made of flesh and blood. I loved The Terrible. Among my favourites were Ouija, The Cottage and Morphine.
