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Life’s Transience
Exits is a collection of poems that moves in and out of nature, memory, and mortality with a sharp eye and an unflinching voice. What inspired you to write this particular collection of poems?
Nearly all of the poems in Exits were written between 2003 and 2021, before the idea of authoring a book ever came to mind. Three years ago, I decided to incorporate what I considered to be my best work into a book entitled Line Drawings. However, during the process of selecting poems, I noticed that a substantial number were related to various aspects of mortality. This led me to curate a more concise, themed collection, and Exits was born.
How did you decide on the themes that run throughout your poetry book?
I think my focus on life’s transience — the finite nature of our biological selves — derives from three sources. First, I was raised without any religious training, so from a very young age, I was left on my own to ponder the enormity of the universe, time and eternity, and the meaning of existence. I remember being cognizant of death as early as age five. Second, as a physician and neuro-ophthalmologist, I’ve cared for numerous patients with serious and/or life-threatening diseases. And third, since 1999, I’ve had to deal with the spinal cord variant of multiple sclerosis and the ramifications of that disease.
Did you write these poems with a specific audience in mind, or was it a more personal endeavor?
During the writing process, the intended audience was always me, or, to be more precise, the facsimile of me that constantly looks over my shoulder and critiques every word I draft. The word ecstasy comes to mind. It captures the elation I feel when a line finally comes together, but it derives from the Greek ek stasis ― to stand outside of oneself.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with writing for a defined audience, or respecting the conventions of a particular genre, or exploring themes and issues that are currently in the public eye. My approach happens to be different. What matters most to me are the words on the page, how they sound in air, and meeting the standards I set for myself.
What did you learn about yourself through writing this book?
The lessons I learned while writing the poems and designing the book (which are outlined below) may be of benefit to other debut authors and/or emerging writers:
- Write poems that reflect your unique aesthetic sensibilities. Try not to be overly influenced by prevailing trends or by contemporary poetic styles.
- Edit mercilessly over an extended period. Satisfying first drafts often begin to show their flaws only after sufficient time has elapsed to afford an objective assessment.
- Begin your foray into publication by submitting poems to literary journals. This will help you determine which of your poems resonates with experienced reviewers. Before each submission, make sure that your poem is a good fit for the journal.
- Be patient. Practically every aspect of the publication process moves more slowly than expected.
- Be persistent. Exits went through twenty-two revisions over the course of a year before I felt it was ready for publication.
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We live our lives counting moments, those we hope will last forever, and those we fear. In Exits, award-winning poet Stephen C. Pollock transforms these moments into sublime and magical music. With language both intimate and powerful, he explores the fragility of life, the cyclical truths of nature, and the mysteries of renewal that arise from even the darkest places.
Each poem is paired with evocative artwork, creating an immersive reading experience that lingers long after the final page. From myth to mourning, from dreams to decline, and from flora and fauna to the warming of our world, Exits reminds us that beauty is never far from loss, and that every departure leaves a door ajar.
Winner of the 2024 North Street Book Prize for Poetry, the 2023 Readers’ Favorite Gold Medal, and seventeen other literary honors, Exits is a masterful collection for those who believe that poems should move you, stay with you, and change the way you look at life.
Step into these pages. Lose yourself in poetry that’s both technically exquisite and emotionally arresting. And discover why every exit is, in its own way, an entrance.
Exits
Exits is a collection of poems that moves in and out of nature, memory, and mortality with a sharp eye and an unflinching voice. Pollock balances images of birds, leaves, storms, and insects with meditations on illness, grief, and human cruelty. Each poem feels like an opening and a closing at once, a gesture toward beauty that never ignores the shadows pressing in around it. The artwork paired with the text deepens the mood, giving the reader both a visual and lyrical way to linger with themes of death, decay, and renewal.
I found myself pulled into the tension between delicacy and brutality. The spider spinning its web, the butterfly pinned by a child’s cruel hand, the leaves clinging through winter, these images stayed with me. Pollock’s language is careful, yet it carries an undercurrent of urgency, as if each word knows it has little time left. Some poems made me pause and reread, not because they were obscure, but because they struck me with a sudden intensity. Others, like “Steve’s Balloons,” were so unexpected that I had to smile even while feeling the melancholy underneath.
At times, the heaviness of the book pressed down hard. Illness, biopsy, syringe, tube, the clinical intrudes often, and it brought me back to my own brushes with hospitals and fear. That familiarity made the reading even more raw, and I appreciated Pollock’s honesty. He doesn’t romanticize suffering, but he does find ways to trace light through it. There is also a musicality to his lines that reminded me of older poets, the kind whose rhythm stays in your body long after the words leave your mouth. That mix of craft and emotion gave the book both polish and heart.
I would recommend Exits to readers who like poetry that doesn’t look away. If you’re drawn to reflections on life and death, or if you find comfort in nature as a mirror for human experience, this book will speak to you. It’s not an easy read, but it’s a meaningful one, and I think anyone who values honesty wrapped in artful language will find something to hold onto here.
Pages: 45 | ASIN : B0BXVJB79N
Thief of Laughter
Jim Frazee’s Thief of Laughter is an intimate and evocative collection of poetry that scrapes raw nerves and lays bare the fragility of identity, memory, and family. The book weaves through a lifetime of emotional collisions. Fathers and sons, adolescent cruelty, war and its ghosts, spiritual betrayals, and fleeting moments of tenderness. Frazee captures these with a poet’s sharp eye and a survivor’s haunted voice, his language pulling no punches and never hiding behind pretense.
Frazee’s style is straightforward, sure-footed, but packed with layers. What struck me hardest was how many of the poems felt like emotional snapshots. The kind you can’t put back in the album once you’ve touched them. The violence of silence in “My Father’s Lesson,” the unspeakable grief tucked into “Elegy for E,” or the nearly unbearable self-loathing and regret that pulses through “Jell-O,” these pieces didn’t ask for sympathy. They earned it.
And yet, Frazee doesn’t let the darkness smother you. There’s a strange grace to his honesty. The title poem, “Thief of Laughter,” might be one of the most potent explorations of intergenerational pain I’ve read in a long time. It’s unflinching. Still, there’s beauty in the precision of his images and a kind of quiet rebellion in his insistence on remembering. Even when he writes about cruelty towards himself, others, or from the world at large, there’s a current of compassion, sometimes bitter, sometimes soft, running beneath it all.
If you’ve ever grappled with your past, questioned the people who raised you, or wondered what ghosts still rattle around in your own head, this book might sting, but it’ll also speak to you. I’d recommend Thief of Laughter to anyone who’s lived long enough to lose something important.
Pages: 156 | ASIN : B0F3KNLJ3P
The Human Condition
Scandals is a collection of prose poems and microfiction, where the grotesque and mundane are transformed into surreal snapshots of American despair and dark humor. Were there specific influences that shaped the rhythm and tone of this collection?
I love the lyrics of David Yow, Nick Cave, Laurie Anderson, the lyrics on Nirvana’s In Utero, anything that paints the kind of stranger-than-fiction aspects of humanity. My favorite poet is Eric Paul, who was also the vocalist for Arab on Radar, The Chinese Stars, Psychic Graveyard, etc. His lyrics especially made me want to write poetry. I’m also influenced by overheard dialogue; I keep a small notebook to document things I hear every day. Then, there are more visual influences like Diane Arbus, Todd Solondz, Werner Herzog, Harmony Korine, Mary Ellen Mark, and the countless fly-on-the-wall documentaries I obsess over like Streetwise, Strongman, and Vernon, Florida. I’ve always likened poems to photographs, where I’m sorta writing what I can’t immediately shoot a photo of or document in a visual way, whether it’s in my head or right in front of me.
Scandals feels personal and raw. How much of it was drawn from your own life versus pure invention?
It’s a little bit of both. Some are fully autobiographical, some are entirely fiction, others are a blend where I might take my own experience and mix it with someone I saw on the street, then add something a friend told me when I was in 3rd grade.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this collection?
I definitely wanted it to be honest about the full spectrum of the human condition. Good people doing bad things, bad people doing good things. I’m not very interested in a kind of world without gray areas, where everything is boxed into good and evil. There are a lot of references to sitcoms to show the sometimes stark contrast between the viewer’s life and the fictional lives they’re watching on TV, where many of them are examples of the American dream that most viewers likely will not achieve in their lives. I also found it interesting how, when an actor gets arrested, ends up in the middle of a scandal, or acts out as a result of childhood trauma, many still see that person as the character they play on TV and forget they’re human/are not those characters. I imagined a kind of, “What happens when the camera is turned off/an episode is over?” world with all these sitcoms that mirrors aspects of the real world.
If Scandals had a soundtrack, what five songs would absolutely be on it?
- “Wichita Lineman” by Glen Campbell
- “Everyone I Went to High School With is Dead” by Mr. Bungle
- “Goodbye to Romance” by Ozzy Osbourne
- “Skrag Theme” by Aerial M
- “Runaway” by Del Shannon
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“Darkly comical, surreal, and at times, deeply touching.”- Sara B. (Artist)
“The tears of a clown clang against the floor like silver bullet casings. Speeding forward locked in battle with apparitions emerging from the afterburner, Alex Osman is in a league of his own.”- Gwen Hilton (author of Sent to the Silkworm House &Where the Breastplate Meets the Blade)
I’ll be honest – I jumped at the chance to blurb this book because it meant I didn’t have to wait as long to read it. Alex Osman’s work will do that to you. I needed another hit. No one else can find the absurdist wonder of dancing primates or toddlers graffitiing the KISS logo around their kindergarten.
Scandals – Alex Osman’s strongest collection of writing so far – is full of cultural references – because the morning kids show entertainers, sitcom stars, the brand names of the day are the true landscape of the Americana that Osman chooses to mine and dissect with and within his work.
Osman is a genuine surrealist and understands the comedy, the horror, the pain, the immortal and yet constantly fleeting nature within everyday pop-culture. Something that adds a strength and depth to his multi-faceted body of work is that he also sees the beauty, the brief moments of truth and bliss amid the confusing blur of the whole mess of everything that makes up life. And we should be thankful that he does. Work this brilliant and evocative should be treated like the rare jewel that it is.- Thomas Moore (author, Forever, Alone, & Your Dreams)
Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift’s music has always been full of poetry sharp, confessional, sometimes wistful, sometimes vengeful, always deeply felt. Invisible Strings, edited by Kristie Frederick Daugherty, takes that connection and runs with it, bringing together 113 poets who respond to Swift’s lyrics not with direct references but with their own poetic interpretations. The result is a deeply layered, often moving collection of poetry that feels like an artistic conversation. It’s a book that blends fandom with literary appreciation, proving just how much Swift’s songwriting has shaped modern culture.
What really struck me about this anthology was how it captures the emotional landscape of Swift’s music without ever quoting it outright. Some poems are straightforward responses to a song’s themes, like Bianca Stone’s Love’s Cure, which plays with the idea of love’s fleeting and sometimes dangerous nature much like Swift’s The Archer or You’re Losing Me. Others, like Maggie Smith’s Pull, echo the isolation and longing found in exile and tolerate it, using stark natural imagery to convey deep personal truths. I loved the puzzle-like aspect of this book, trying to match poems to the Swift songs that inspired them, but also appreciating how each poet makes the subject their own.
Some pieces stood out immediately. Andrea Cohen’s Duet has that quiet ache of unspoken heartbreak, much like Swift’s most devastating ballads. Then there’s Jessica Laser’s Concessions, which nails the feeling of post-breakup ghost sightings, the way someone lingers in the background of your life long after they’re gone. These poems aren’t just responses to Taylor Swift; they’re extensions of the emotions she puts into her music, proving that heartbreak, nostalgia, and reinvention are universal themes that cross from pop songs into poetry.
The book is also incredibly well-curated. Daugherty’s introduction captures the spirit of a true Swiftie and literary enthusiast, explaining how the anthology came together and why Swift’s work matters in a poetic sense. The order of the poems feels intentional, creating an emotional arc much like a Swift album does. There are moments of joy and lightness (Glitter Gel Pen energy), then deeper reflections (Fountain Pen introspection), then gut-punch endings that stay with you. This is a genuinely moving collection that any poetry lover could appreciate, whether they’re a Swift fan or not.
Invisible Strings? is perfect for Swifties who love poetry, writers who appreciate the lyrical quality of songwriting, and anyone who enjoys exploring emotions through multiple artistic lenses. If you’ve ever cried to All Too Well or screamed along to The Lakes, you’ll find something here that resonates. It’s proof that great lyrics don’t just live in songs; they spark ideas, stories, and emotions that keep echoing long after the music fades.
Pages: 282 | ASIN : B0D8CDBJP1
Moving to the Edge of the World
Moving to the Edge of the World is an evocative and mystical poetry collection divided into three parts: Medicine Bear, Burning Bush, and Eaten by Angels. It weaves together themes of nature, spiritual awakening, loss, and the human condition. From personal reflections to mythic imagery, the poems transcend simple narrative and dive into deeply symbolic territory. Whether she’s describing the cosmic kiss where life begins or the journey of salmon struggling home, Alla Bozarth’s writing is full of metaphorical depth and emotional resonance.
The writing style is intense and deliberate and full of layered meanings that require slow reading to unpack. I found Bozarth’s way of blending the natural world with the metaphysical particularly striking. In Where Life Begins, for instance, she doesn’t just speak of life in literal terms but invokes volcanic forces as a metaphor for creation, intimacy, and transformation. This rich blending of imagery gives the collection a timeless and almost primordial quality.
The collection can be challenging at times, with metaphors that feel opaque. In Piscean Moon, for instance, the imagery of salmon and celestial themes required me to reread, making the emotional payoff rewarding but sometimes hard to reach. Still, I found the personal poems, like Jewels, to be more relatable. The way Bozarth speaks of a bracelet from her mother lost and then rediscovered struck a personal chord. The sense of time, memory, and grief resonated beautifully, reminding me of how objects can carry our emotional history. This poem, unlike some of the more abstract ones, felt more grounded and emotionally immediate, making it one of my favorites in the collection.
Moving to the Edge of the World is ideal for readers who enjoy poetry that doesn’t shy away from the mystical or symbolic. It’s a collection that speaks to those who appreciate deep reflection, a connection with nature, and spiritual seeking. If you’re someone who enjoys poetry that stretches your imagination and invites contemplation of life’s mysteries, this is definitely worth the journey.
Pages: 336 | ASIN : B0791M5SFC
Bachelor Holiday
Bachelor Holiday is a collection of poetry by William Huhn that pulls you into a world of fragmented beauty, intimate reflections, and quiet explorations of life’s often overlooked moments. The poems are divided into four parts, each delving into themes of love, loss, time, and nature, with subtle shifts in tone and focus. Huhn’s writing feels personal yet universal, as he captures fleeting emotions and images with a sense of gentle nostalgia and raw realism.
The writing is unpretentious yet rich in emotion. Huhn’s imagery is vivid but often minimal, as seen in “Bye Love You” from Part One, where he depicts a simple yet powerful moment: “You will have all/ the leaves from her hair/ falling—to catch.” The balance between the tangible and the abstract is striking throughout the collection. I found myself swept up in the small, delicate observations, yet always aware of a deeper, more elusive meaning lurking just beneath the surface.
Huhn’s style is refreshingly conversational at times, even playful. “Dry Spell” captures the absurdity of trying to enjoy a beach day amidst a raw sewage spill: “No Swimming/ said the sign/ the fish and gulls/ couldn’t read.” His humor feels natural, a way of grounding the reader in everyday life while still playing with larger ideas. Yet, when he wants to, he turns effortlessly towards the profound, as in “Expedition,” where he reflects on friendship and perseverance in an almost haunting way.
Bachelor Holiday is an impressive debut that will speak to readers who appreciate poetry that intertwines the beauty of small moments with broader reflections on life and human experience. I think it’s for anyone who enjoys a bit of mystery in their poetry, a mix of playfulness and introspection. Fans of poets like Mary Oliver or Billy Collins, who balance light and dark, personal and universal, will find Huhn’s work a satisfying read.
Pages: 86 | ISBN : 1609644689
Mosaics of Shadow and Light
Mosaics of Shadow and Light by A.W. Jones is a poignant collection of poetry that offers an intimate glimpse into the author’s journey through life’s adversities. As a reader who appreciates the strength derived from hardship, I found a profound connection with Jones’s narrative. The anthology, which draws from her experiences of childhood trauma, the grief of losing a loved one, and the challenges of mental health, resonates deeply with those who have encountered similar trials.
Jones’s upbringing, marked by an alcoholic father and a tumultuous parental marriage, sets the stage for her emotionally charged verses. The book courageously addresses the impacts of verbal abuse, a subject I personally understand, and its significant implications on one’s mental well-being. Jones artfully uses her poetry as a vessel to convey the transformative power of these experiences. The structure of the book is thoughtfully organized into four distinct sections, each representing a significant phase in her life. Her love poems, characterized by their raw vulnerability and intense longing, were particularly moving. Jones does not shy away from difficult topics such as physical and sexual abuse, skillfully using her voice to illuminate the often-silent suffering of many women. “The Crossroads of Holding On and Letting Go” is a standout piece that beautifully articulates the agony of loss. It’s a universal theme that evokes a deep emotional response reminiscent of personal losses and the haunting absence of once-familiar presences. Another notable piece, “As Time Turns the Pages,” showcases Jones’s creative prowess with thought-provoking lines for each letter of the alphabet. The inclusion of artistic photographs enhances the reading experience, adding another layer to the author’s expressive storytelling. These poems are an invitation to journey through the intricate landscape of human emotion. Jones’s willingness to share her deepest feelings sets an admirable precedent for emotional honesty in literature.
For those seeking a profound connection with a poetic soul, Mosaics of Shadow and Light is a compelling choice. A.W. Jones’s work is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the transformative power of sharing one’s story.
Pages: 153 | ASIN : B0C9SM4GKH
LITERARY TITAN 