Blog Archives
The Meteor Symphony: Stories and Poems
The Meteor Symphony is a colorful mix of short stories, poems, and microfiction, stitched together with music, humor, grief, and hope. It moves from tales of jazz musicians and stolen saxophones to intimate portraits of aging, love, heartbreak, and resilience. Some pieces lean into whimsy, others lean into sorrow, and many hover in the strange, honest space in between. The title story ties it all together with an imaginative search for a lost symphony, but the book itself feels like a symphony of voices, moods, and rhythms.
I enjoyed the range in this book. One page had me laughing at the absurdity of a sax heist, and the next had me sitting with the weight of a widow’s quiet grief. Burke writes with sharp clarity, yet there’s also a looseness in her storytelling that feels natural, like listening to a friend talk late into the night. I loved that she didn’t try to polish away the odd details. People misstep, conversations derail, feelings clash, and it all feels real. At times, the jumps between stories and poems felt a little jarring, but in a way, that’s what made it lively. The collection refuses to settle into one mood.
I also found myself connecting with her fascination with ordinary people. She doesn’t write grand heroes or villains, but flawed, funny, messy people. That resonated with me. Her style is direct but not cold, and she doesn’t shy away from emotions. Some of the poems hit me harder than the stories, brief as they were, because they carried that distilled punch of truth.
I’d say this book is best for readers who like variety, who don’t mind skipping from lighthearted banter to heavier reflections, and who enjoy the intimacy of short-form writing. If you’re open to being surprised, amused, and sometimes gutted all in one sitting, Burke’s collection is worth your time. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves music, who has wrestled with family, or who has ever paused at sunset and felt the ache of beauty and loss in the same breath.
Pages: 114 | ASIN : B0DTJ37FVK
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
Author Links: GoodReads | Instagram | Amazon
“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)
LITERARY TITAN 