★ ★ ★ ★

I received an e-ARC for review on Netgalley, but all thoughts are my own.

The hook for this poetry collection is: “A lot can happen between the first sip of coffee and the last taste of whiskey.” And damn if that’s not true.

There is an enchanting juxtaposition between the early mornings with a strong cup of coffee jolting your senses and then the late evening with a glass of whiskey dulling your surroundings. That is where this poetry collection lives. Cyrus Parker discusses the darkest and most beautiful parts of humanity.

I particularly enjoyed the section on 4 o’clock in the morning, “this desperate longing to hear everything there is to be said before the hour is up because five o’clock is for the living…it’s for realizing that in order to live, you must first survive.”

Some poetry collections are more for the artist than for the reader, many of them actually. And I think as readers we sometimes forget that writers write for themselves. The write to be seen in the world, they write to cope, and they write to feel. Some collections aren’t meant for the satisfaction of others. I felt that in this collection. While I connected to many of the poems throughout, there were others where I felt Cyrus Parker speaking to the reader as if in an empty room. And that’s okay too.

I’ll leave this review with some words from this collection that meant a lot more to me than I expected them to:

“i make my morning coffee the long way; the slow way, to force myself to simply be.”

Cyrus Parler