Bad Moon Books reports Bruce Boston’s Dark Matters is now available.
In Dark Matters, Boston once again shows the range that has made him a grandmaster among contemporary poets. Although speculative fiction is his most frequent touchstone, here he also references Jean Cocteau, Wallace Stevens, Mose Allison, T.S. Eliot, and Nostradamus, among others. The sly political and cultural commentary to be found in his “People” poems (“Harvest People,” “Rat People,” “Assassin People,” “Mole People”), in “Faith of the Torturer,” “On Homo Reptilis,” “Dystopian Dusk,” “Casket of the Age,” “Ten Dark Quatrains Channeling Nostradamus,” and “Key Events of the Third Millenium” – all show the slantwise truth-telling of his work.
Although, as befits its title, this is a volume focused on dark themes – stranglers and berserkers, grimoires and curses, demons and vultures, ghosts and zombies, cemeteries and necropolises, shadows and dark rains – it yet manages surprising flashes of grim humor (as in “A Siren’s Tale” and “Robovamp”). No matter how seemingly “marginal,” “extreme,” or “dark” the science fiction, horror, and fantasy tropes Boston plays upon here, in his hands those extremities cut into and through all the supposedly central and mundane assumptions of our daylight world. This is a volume of work both incisive and insightful, full of the subtlety, sophistication, and beauty of language we have come to expect from Boston’s previous work – but more darkly glittering, in this outing. – Howard V. Hendrix
You can pick up a copy here: Dark Matters
