A young writer presents a compilation of multigenre works, divided into two parts.

According to the introduction, the first part, “Spray Gold Upon the City AKA Spray Paint,” is raw, while the second part, “Artistique AKA Oils,” is more refined. They were written between 2008 and 2013, he notes, and through a manic episode in his early 20s; he writes that he was diagnosed with schizophrenic and manic-depressive illnesses. The book’s first part has a stream-of-consciousness style that’s intricately creative and subversive. It contains moments of rage, contemplations of death and insanity, and a slew of historic references. Despite being described as raw, the first part features many imagistic gems, as in “Rematch, Bobby Fischer, 20 Secs Later”: “I do not e’er have known ye, yet ye speak volumes of prodigies down the lost halls of contrariness. Touch shall be all healing. But until then, no Queen shall touch your King.” In “Black Light Bulb,” “The light is not bright is not white, is dark and dank and black and blue. / A shimmering glow, for all to know, just there, and anything renouncing the spotlight, the ego.” A play titled “Sophocles’s Unfound Friend Tragedy About Scarlet Haired Darcy” tells of a tragedy in which “the Kid” commits suicide after receiving unsound advice from “CBT Therapist” regarding an unanswered letter to a “sensitive chick” named Darcy, who texts the Kid moments after his death. In a moment of clarity, in “Mai ’68 Graffiti, & Joual,” the speaker articulates a fear that will be intimately relatable to anyone who suffers from chronic illness: “Being alive & having a Dead Life instead of a Life is indisputably worse than the Life after Death.”

Sardonic humor tints the more serious works and drives the wholly satirical works in this collection. In “Psych Eval of Jesus Christ, Son of Man,” for instance, Jesus is thusly diagnosed: “Paranoid-Type Self-Referential Delusions. / Delusional Subtype: Primary. / Patient opines God and Salvation frequently.” Sometimes rage and misogyny overcomes the speaker, as in “Hostile Brothels of Fucking Mothers.” In the second part, the theme of death endures. In “O, My Eternal Friend”: “On the beach of the shallow waters of the infinite depth there, Ha. / I walk the plank after you, & we carry thru the drains of ourselves, the veins forever unclogged.” The short story “A Sherpa’s Constitution” evokes an Albert Camus–like absurdist approach to life: “despite purposelessness, the climb itself has an intrinsic purpose. What purpose, Suddah? Suddah looks at me wearily, then, I respond, as knowingly, as self-aware as ever: To go Beyond God.” For the speakers of these many collected works, a wide array of subjects converge: Mathematics meets Marx; women are alien, despised, and revered all at once; and philosophers and Gods are acquaintances. The speaker rules the universe, but remains utterly vulnerable to everything inside it, making for an offbeat exercise in meditative reading.

A set of works in a voice that intriguingly swings between eras and structures, unbeholden to convention.

A contemporary book of philosophical poetry by an American poet.

Savreux explores the underbelly of the human experience in this poetry collection. The poet begins by addressing “The downfallen, the homeless; the hungry; the jailed; / the jobless; the abused ones; the abusers who lost their / way; and those who are afflicted with illness, the ones / who are obscure but not behind an N95 mask or due / to covid but social invisibility” as well as “the people who look away,” (“Commencement of the Elegiac”) reminding them all to acknowledge the world’s humanity. Mortality is a recurring theme; in “A Syringe in a Vein,” the speaker proclaims that life is “but a syringe full of Death.” After contemplating baptism and burial, the speaker declares, “I want birds to eat me corpse while I lie rotting in a field” (“a.k.a Bathtub for Unclean Infantes”).The poet sprinkles in biblical teachings (if only to rebel against them) and religious musings: “The Pope breathes an unstained grave / Gathering the homeless playing harps / A fancy fantasy dumb utopian Raphael” (“A Crying Virgil”), and an impromptu painting session inspires thoughts about Eden. Sex is also a focal point; “Catalepsy & Fantasy Part I, II, & Redux” describes an affair with a captivating lover. Modern thinkers, like Noam Chomsky and Piaget, garner mentions; Barack Obama and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also make appearances. After much darkness and heaviness, the poet concludes with a prescription for happiness, writing, “If you are sad, I recommend smiling” (“Yes, Smiles Expiate Like Good Medicine!”).

The average reader may find the poems in this collection difficult to follow. The verses are verbose, even Byzantine, with lines like “Gods of parsimony unite in a cosmic matrimony / Their goddesses give birth to infantile contemporaneity / and a man dies in contentment’s cradled antiquity” (“A Syringe in a Vein”). Inconsistent capitalization, the excessive use of exclamation points, and unpredictable rhyme schemes further disrupt the reading experience. The poems ape Old English but lack its elegance in poems like “Catalepsy & Fantasy Part I, II, & Redux”: “She is illogical, I am saintly, infirm & charm’d / But whence does this propensity eek to flow?” (the language turns vulgar: “I never had the balls to cum oil masterpieces”). A few poems seem downright unhinged, as in these lines from “Sunshine Beat Freestyle,” inspired by a Homer statue: “Make it true, the deaf and / the blind will hear and see again. / A Bazooka against DOOM! / Suicide is always DOOMED . . . . / HaHaHa.” Occasionally, the poet leans on cliches like “Time Destroys Us All. / Wisdom is wasted on the young; and Youth / is wasted on the Wise” (“Perfect & Grotesque”). Rarely, the poet deigns to drop in an image or sensory detail; when he does, they are refreshing and ground readers in the scenes of poems like “The Modern Desirous” (“barbarous boots they / kick off the snow”; “whistles of the New York / night”). Unfortunately, too much of the action takes place in the speaker’s head.

A cryptic and chaotic book of poems.

A cryptic and chaotic book of poems.