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Poetry Thrives on a Mystery
What We Hold No Longer is a collection of poems that circle around memory, aging, identity, and the haunting void that lies beneath it all. What inspired you to write this particular collection of poems?
I’ve recently become an avid reader of psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. Last year, one of his books introduced me to Jacques Lacan. Specifically, how our subconscious impacts language, and in turn, how we use language shapes desire. For a poet, what could be more delicious to explore? Ineluctably, even mentioning Lacan brings up his theories on the Void (The Thing) and religion. This, in turn, led me to Lacanian scholar Richard Boothby (Embracing the Void). Along the way, I also read a book by Phillips on our ambivalence towards transforming our lives (On Wanting to Change). Transformation is a particularly important topic at this stage of my life. What I did not anticipate in reading this book was the evocation of so many memories. As a pediatric psychoanalyst, Phillip’s description of childhood, particularly the excruciating years of adolescence, flooded me with things I’d long forgotten (eg, seeing my grandfather’s corpse at age 9, the inchoate sense of frustration, and seeking revenge on my parents’ reputation with a can of red spray paint, etc.).
Can you share a bit about your writing process? Do you have any rituals or routines when writing poetry?
I’m trying to understand my writing behavior. I appear to have a natural rhythm, whereby I’ll write a dozen poems over a month or two and then go silent for just as long. During the quiet months, I read more and pay attention to what I see and listen to: all the things popping up as thoughts and feelings. The poems “The False God’s Lullaby” and “New Year’s Day” were brief glimpses of people, just a few moments of an image that resonated deeply, and unexpectedly.
What moves me from outside triggers something poignant nesting deep inside: “The I of my other who moves silently with me” (The False God’s Lullaby). Also, I love editing. Paul Valéry once said: “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” I think he meant you can always refine and improve a poem. I try to limit my revision window to six months. Once a poem reaches structural stability (ie, I know what I want to say and the confines to say it in), I put it away for several days or weeks at a time. It’s important to understand that during initial composition, the poem’s neural map is being built using high stores of neurotransmitters. This is how we learn. However, it also prevents us from seeing inherent weaknesses when we’re still trying to get our thoughts written down. Taking a break for days or weeks reduces neurotransmitter stores. This removes the blinders to our writing, so we can see problems more readily and find better ways to say what we’re trying to convey.
How do you approach writing about deeply personal or emotional topics?
I think it is important during initial composition to just let things rip, because that is likely to be the most truthful. However, there is a balance to be struck. I’m reminded of a phrase from the Upanishads: “The path to salvation is narrow. It is as difficult to tread as the razor’s edge.” I view confessional poetry as an attempt to achieve psychic salvation. To shy away from powerful emotions creates a sense of falsity impossible to ignore. Yet, in the passion of writing, we can also say too much. Poetry thrives on a mystery, on what is left unsaid. That’s part of the art form I’m still working on improving.
How has this poetry book changed you as a writer, or what did you learn about yourself through writing it?
I have the sense in writing What We Hold No Longer that I’m beginning to mature as a poet. I’m not sure anyone else would agree. But there was something about the Lacanian cycle of poems that shifted my writing in a way I haven’t fully grasped. At this moment, I can’t imagine writing anything more profound or better composed than those poems. Time will tell. Every book I’ve written so far has enriched my sense of self and given me a sense of being more at peace with myself. Something that had eluded me before I’d written The False God’s Lullaby.
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Such topics have been the foundation of his poetry explored in his previous works and have been expanded upon in “What We Hold No Longer.” As in his other works, poems are grouped together in themes. These themes approached from a deeply psychic perspective and include: personal transformations throughout life, existential encounters with “Nothingness,” the rise of fascism, loss, and the realm of an interior life (both our conscious narratives and our river of unconsciousness). What Gedaliah refers to as “the I of my other, who moves silently with me” (The False God’s Lullaby).
The poems in this current collection maintain characteristics that reviewers of his previous works have consistently noted. That “Gedaliah seamlessly blends philosophical depth with artistic expression, offering a deeply reflective journey through identity and human complexity, striking a perfect balance intellectual exploration and emotional resonance.”
Amethyst
Amethyst is a hauntingly beautiful tapestry of poetry that weaves together identity, pain, rebirth, and the search for meaning. Divided into chromatic sections named after shades of purple, each representing a facet of human experience, the book feels like an odyssey through the inner worlds of selfhood and survival. It moves from loss and trauma to reclamation and transcendence, painting scenes of queerness, masculinity, intimacy, and existential ache. Every poem feels like a fragment of a larger confession, tender yet defiant, fragile yet ferociously self-aware. Author Fernando Rover Jr.’s voice is raw, rhythmic, and unapologetically human, like someone whispering truth through a cracked mirror.
Reading this book shook something in me. The language hits hard, sometimes uncomfortably close. There’s this honest grit in how Rover writes about love and pain, as if he’s bleeding on purpose to show that healing isn’t always graceful. Some lines feel like quiet prayers; others explode with profanity and rebellion. I love how he blends vulnerability with resistance, how “Problem Child” snarls right before “Father Hunger” breaks your heart. There’s a rhythm here that doesn’t care about convention. He’s not writing poetry for classrooms or critics, he’s writing to survive. And I felt that. The work feels alive in its contradictions, full of sadness and rage, yet bursting with this strange hope that we can build beauty from our bruises.
But what struck me even more was how Amethyst feels like both a mirror and a map. It asks hard questions about who we are when the world makes us feel unworthy. Sometimes it feels like a séance with the self, a way of calling lost parts of you back home. I caught myself rereading lines just to let them sting again. The collection is fearless in its queerness and in its refusal to make trauma tidy. There’s humor in the mess, too, and flashes of warmth that feel earned.
I’d recommend Amethyst to anyone who’s been cracked open by life and wants to believe that brokenness can still be beautiful. It’s for readers who crave raw emotion and unfiltered truth, who don’t mind getting lost in someone else’s chaos to find their own calm.
Pages: 67 | ASIN : B0FX9F4Y41
A Wave Without a Shore
Verde Mar’s A Wave Without a Shore is a collection of cosmic, romantic, and deeply introspective poetry that travels across galaxies of emotion. It’s the second in the Entangled Universes Trilogy and feels like an odyssey of the human heart stretched over light-years. Each poem blends science and soul, love and starlight, until the line between them vanishes. Through Sol, Andromeda, and beyond, Verde Mar crafts a journey that explores love as both gravitational and spiritual, binding beings across time and space. The book is full of tenderness and ache, and its language, though celestial, often lands close to home.
Verde Mar writes in a way that’s both fragile and fierce. The imagery burns with suns and oceans, yet it’s anchored by something deeply human: loss, longing, wonder. I caught myself rereading lines just to feel them again. Sometimes the poems seem to talk to each other, echoing themes of light, rain, and rebirth. It’s a bit like jazz; it improvises, loops back, and finds new notes in familiar chords. I liked how the poems moved between intimacy and infinity, how they made small moments, like a look or a kiss, feel as vast as galaxies.
At times, I felt a kind of dizzy awe, like I was reading the diary of a star in love with the universe. There’s a hypnotic rhythm here, but also melancholy, an awareness that love, no matter how eternal it feels, still has to live inside the temporary. Some pieces are so intimate they almost blush on the page. Others zoom out, showing humanity as one brief flash of light in a cosmic sea. Verde Mar’s voice is warm and unguarded, yet his language carries a quiet precision that feels earned. The blend of scientific metaphor with emotional truth works beautifully most of the time, though in a few spots it drifts into the abstract. Still, the overall effect is spellbinding.
I’d recommend A Wave Without a Shore to readers who love poetry that makes them both think and feel, especially those drawn to the stars and the soul at once. It’s for dreamers, musicians, lovers, and anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and felt something stir inside. The book doesn’t just ask to be read, it asks to be experienced.
Pages: 206 | ISBN : 978-1837945597
Literary Titan Book Award: Poetry
The Literary Titan Book Award recognizes poets who demonstrate exceptional artistry and proficiency and push the boundaries of language and expression. The recipients are poets who excel in their technical skills and evoke deep emotional responses, challenge thoughts, and illuminate new perspectives through their work. The award honors those who contribute to the literary landscape with their unique voices and powerful words.
Award Recipients
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
The Savior and the Shadow Queen: A Fantastical Tale Told Through Sequential Poems
The Savior and the Shadow Queen is a story told through poetry, unfolding in layers that mix fantasy and raw human emotion. It begins as a mythic tale of Eselli and Nabseatsi, two friends who set out to defeat a terrible enemy called the Shadow Queen. Their world feels ancient and mystical, full of prophecies, weapons, and dark magic. But as the story progresses, that fantasy begins to fade, and the truth emerges. Eselli is Leslie, a young woman living in the real world, grappling with grief, guilt, and the haunting weight of loss. The Shadow Queen becomes something much deeper than an external enemy; she is the darkness inside us all, the reflection of our pain and self-hatred.
McAfee writes with such openness that it’s hard not to feel what Leslie feels. Her pain, her confusion, her desperate hope for healing, it all comes through in the rhythm of the poems. The fantasy world works beautifully as a metaphor for mental illness and self-discovery. I loved how the story shifts from myth to memory, from sword and prophecy to hospital rooms and recovery. That transition hit me hard. The writing itself is simple, almost deceptively so, but it carries deep emotion. It’s the kind of poetry that doesn’t need fancy words to make you feel something, it just does. The pacing feels natural, the imagery vivid, and the emotions raw enough to make you pause and sit with them.
I could feel the compassion in McAfee’s voice. The book doesn’t wallow in sadness, even though it’s born from it. It offers forgiveness, for oneself, for others, for the past. I appreciated that McAfee didn’t sugarcoat the pain, yet she gave it meaning. The real-world sections are written with quiet strength. There’s hope tucked between every line, and I found myself rooting for Leslie as if she were someone I knew. The author’s choice to end the book with a direct message to the reader was perfect. It felt intimate, like a friend reaching out to say, “You’re not alone.”
I’d recommend The Savior and the Shadow Queen to readers who loved The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Both books explore inner transformation through journeys that seem external at first but reveal themselves as deeply personal. Like Santiago’s search for his treasure, Leslie’s quest to defeat the Shadow Queen becomes a metaphor for finding meaning after loss. But where Coelho’s story leans on destiny and spiritual discovery, McAfee’s feels more grounded in real emotion like grief, guilt, and the slow rebuilding of self-worth.
Pages: 102 | ASIN : B0CH411ZSP
AmerAsian: My Journey to Becoming Whole as a Mixed Korean-American
Kimberly McAfee’s AmerAsian is a heartfelt collection of poems that moves through childhood pain, cultural confusion, and the long climb toward self-acceptance. The book unfolds in three sections: The Beginning, An Emotional Journey, and Sweet Self-Acceptance. Each poem reads like a small window into McAfee’s soul. Through vivid imagery and references to Korean folklore, mythology, and family memories, she traces her path as a biracial woman learning to embrace both halves of herself. The voice is deeply personal, sometimes tender, sometimes raw, always honest. By the end, what began as a record of struggle becomes a love letter to identity, belonging, and transformation.
Some poems stung with their simplicity, like Monsters Within and My Collection, which capture the ache of growing up different in a world that craves sameness. Others, like A Bittersweet Return and Dokdo, filled me with quiet awe, showing how home can be both a place and a feeling. McAfee’s words don’t hide behind complexity. They’re plain, heartfelt, and striking because of that. The mix of personal reflection and mythological imagery made me pause more than once.
What stayed with me most was her voice. It’s gentle yet unflinching. She doesn’t pretend the road to self-love is easy. She admits to doubts, to shame, to hoping that a plane ride to Seoul might fix what was broken. It didn’t, and that honesty hit hard. When she finally finds peace in her own identity, the relief is contagious. I loved that she never forces resolution. Instead, she lets acceptance come quietly, like a sunrise after a long night. The rhythm of her poems felt natural, unpolished in the best way. There’s a vulnerability in that, a truth that can’t be faked.
I’d recommend AmerAsian to anyone who’s ever felt like they didn’t fit anywhere. Mixed-race readers, immigrants, or anyone searching for self-understanding. It’s a mirror for people who’ve lived between cultures, between expectations, between who they were and who they’re becoming. McAfee’s writing may be simple, but her emotions run deep.
Pages: 60 | ASIN : B0BZSK5W6F
My Love Letter
Black Architects is a lyrical tapestry of poems and meditations that transforms Blackness into a sacred hymn that’s part prayer, part protest, and all love. What inspired you to write and publish this collection?
Well, first I want to thank you for the opportunity to reflect on the work. It was inspired by an incident that was racially charged, which occurred at a job that I had. I remember feeling the lowest that day, though refusing to let them see me cry. On the train ride home, I started to write this soliloquy/prayer, declarations if you will, by hand in protest. Every time I wrote a line I felt a sort of redemption that I knew, if no body else, the Almighty would be witness to me climbing out of the hole I was in. In that job space, and other spaces, I felt the compression and pressure of having to hide the majority of my identity. Though I dared anyway, in some ways, to embody the ideals, culture, and depth of what I encompass as a black woman, I felt the battle every single day to be, speak, do, and exist otherwise. Aversion for true expressions of blackness is so intricately and subtlety interwoven in the fabric of our society, that it becomes easy for that aversion to manifest, and the smart from it is hard at times to pinpoint, but undeniably experienced. Black Architects was born from this. It came as protest, as a resistance to extinction. It is my love letter to and celebration of black people, written to those who continue to build our legacies in this world. The architects are the young, middle aged and seasoned who see themselves as caring about this world, being architects of thought, experiences and manifestations that will lead people to honor themselves, despite how others may dishonor them. The work was also inspired by the community where I live. I see black faces, in all variety, everyday. Working, playing, growing, having setbacks, prospering, loving. So it was important to tap into this pulse of the people and show us in even the mundane aspects of living. In this predominately black community, we still don’t control resources or have many businesses, so in a way Black Architects is also how one dreams to be the architect that lives just beneath the surface in each of us.
How did you approach balancing vulnerability and defiance in your writing about Black identity?
I balanced the two by just being honest about my experience. I let my love for mankind in general shine through as an act of defending an oppressed identity, like I would for any other people I see being stifled. I practiced a sort of curiosity as though I was both outsider and member of the community, which informed the observations presented in the work. It was important for me to come straight from the heart and to say everything with my chest despite resistance because my only audience at the time of the work’s conception, was myself and the Almighty. Both of whom it is impossible to lie to, and I wanted to extend that courage to the reader. It came from love’s protest and can be seen as Love’s defense of me, who at the time of writing felt deeply wounded and dangerously vulnerable. That day at work, and many others in that work environment, I suffered almost disparaging defeat. The part of me that refused to die found a home in the larger tradition of struggles of black identity, and expanded within the honesty and authenticity of expression.
In the process of writing, I felt the support of my 10,000, my ancestors – and all of heaven, really – witnessing and celebrating with me. Even so, I knew I risked offending and that is also where defiance set in. There are some who expect that every other identity can be celebrated without question but when black people unite in this way, it is threatening. I’ve noticed and experienced that the black voice tends to be sacrificially inclusive, speaking for every and each, with associations to other black people only assumed, rarely explicit. Even in this interview as I express my love for black identity, I feel compelled and forced, almost, to remind about my love for other groups as if my expression of solidarity with my community would mean otherwise. Why is this?
We, like other groups, are not monolithic and I tried to show some of our diversity. I was not trying to speak for a whole group of people. These lines are simply a testament of how a single mind sees blackness and they are for any others that can see and celebrate this too. Being unapologetic about love is something I’ve had to practice and my fondness, deep affection and concern for my people, I hope, is apparent. Honesty, truth and love are the only ways to truly touch and reach people. In keeping with this reminder I was able to maintain the balance between the vulnerability and defiance so palpable in the work.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Vulnerability is one of them. In all our function and dysfunction, we are bared for the world to see. This work came through me while I was on the train, with my writing pad open for all onlookers to see – to some pleasing, and to others distasteful. Still the courage to be – considering and despite – persisted. Love is another theme. The multi-dimensional and variety of ways that we do exist and persist conveys, I hope, the beneficence of the Almighty who avenges the oppressed and reinforces the poor in spirit. We’re inspired to have this joy that for little reason, be. Redemption is also a theme. The work ends calling forth the youth, painting a picture of the architects of better days to be birthed from the sowing of this work.
Which artists, writers, or ancestral voices guided you while writing this book?
Christ Jesus guided me to be unflinchingly honest about the triumphs and despair of being a black woman. His walk on Earth inspired me to endeavor the universal heart through love and appeal to the cosmic conscience in man transcending identity throughout the work.
Emperor Haile Selassie I, the quintessential, cosmopolitan man, was a huge inspiration. His concern for the world has always been apparent to me, though his love for his own people never to diminish. Reflecting on the heights chartered by his words, inspired the loftiness of description in the text.
Dr. Maya Angelou was a huge influence. She took on the challenge so well of expressing her love for her people and for all people simultaneously and effortlessly. So I felt less alone in taking on the mission of this work.
They both were so masterful with the written/spoken word, that I could only dream to pave my own path and trajectory with their light as my guide.
E. E Cummings also has a quote in the same tradition of how the work was born: “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” Black Architects bandages the mind broken from this fight.
I identified with Frantz Fanon’s Black Face, White Masks and I ambitioned to be as astute an observer as he when it came to communicating and constructing the plight and positionality of the black architect.
I was also listening to this one Nina Simone song on repeat while composing the collection: it’s called “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. The work was written matching the ebb and flow and climax of her piece. It is very much woven into the every line of Black Architects.
Lastly, Marcus Garvey was a model because like Garvey in the whirlwind in one of his infamous speeches, I wanted this voice – this celebration – to be witness to the love and defiance enduring through time in the blood, DNA, genes and generations of a people. It is a message to the people at that job and in the world at large that they/it can never kill my spirit. Love, which I have chosen, will always outlast hate and though I may have died in battle that day, I am destined to be resurrected in the coming generation of architects that will redeem this world, black and otherwise.
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Black Architects is all the variations of ‘Black’ and ‘Excellence’ paired together. It is a rallying cry and celebration that interweaves an account of a people’s triumphs, their weaknesses, their shortcomings and their aspirations. It is a picture of what it is like to be Black in America. It is a protest against the monotony of invisibility of the Black plight in a Western purview demanding a reinvention of how we love ourselves: that we do love ourselves and our seed.
LITERARY TITAN 