inpariswithyou

Reviewing poetry is hard. More than fiction, I think, poetry is subjective; what one person may admire as the best poem in the world may be another reader’s idea of digested bile and detritus. Poetry is about reaction; it’s about, as Emily DIckinson put it, feeling as if you’ve just been decapitated. What decapitates me may not be the same thing that decapitates you. Now, didErotikon chop off my head? I’m feeling a bit severed, yes, but I’m not a denizen of Sleepy Hollow quite yet.

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This one was not an easy read. And I don't say that to indicate any sort of quality judgement, especially a negative one, about the book. In fact, I quite liked it. The book is the first in a four-part series, Return to Nevèrÿon, that is, more than anything else, an experiment. If you know anything at all about Delany, you know two things: first, he's very intellectual, and second, nothing is ever just what it appears to be on the surface. So though this series may seem to be a sword-and-sorcery epic about slavery, it is also a meta-textual look at story-telling and literature and writing itself -- letters and alphabets, not the art of creating characters and plot and setting.

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