Every now and then I pick up a book of poetry. I have a degree in English, so I’m not unfamiliar with poems, but here in the wild I don’t stumble across them with great frequency. I appreciate the occasionally well-crafted song lyric, and enjoy the effect when somebody like Tolkien throws a poem into his prose. Poetry works like a packet of seasoning in the middle of a plate of good but otherwise homogeneous food. A poem forces you to slow down and let the gears of your mind start spinning. If you charge right through, the effect is akin to running a marathon at the Louvre. Poems work a lot better when you read them out loud, and sometimes you can change a room by shouting words into it. ‘Gaslit By A Madman: Illuminated Poems’ by Max J. Lewy is a book of poetry that is much closer…
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