Right now, at this very moment, I’m deep in the last edits of Hal Duncan’s Songs for the Devil and Death, the next paperback to be released from Papaveria Press. We are very close, and yet I am very far away from gathering my thoughts on this book well enough to even write a decent blurb. Or to create a decent advert for the thing.

Hal Duncan’s poetry is much, much bigger than I am. Reading the manuscript when it was first a Word doc, then again as I laid it out in InDesign, and then again when we edited the manuscript, and then again as I read the pdf, and now yet again as I hold the actual proof copy of the book in my hands, I experience this unholy set of emotions, this awful ride from the utmost heights to the deep belows, and I am left entirely speechless.

Make no mistake. I love Hal Duncan, I love that he exists, I love that people like him (inasmuch as there are other people like him) exist. I love that he writes and shares himself in that manner with the rest of us. I love this book, but it’s smashing what little professionalism I have into tiny bits. There is one poem in particular, called “Wake”, that fills me up so much I have to read a line, then put it down. Read a line, then put it down. It’s about the death of a brother, and the aftermath.

“On such a day, on such a day,
There’s nothing anyone can say.”

As some of you know, I lost a son some 23 years ago. That anniversary rapidly approaches. I know this poem, I know it all, and I know that no one could have written it better than Hal Duncan. There is power there, just under the surface, and heaven help us all should it break free.

I believe that poets stand apart. I believe they are a type of modern shaman, walking between worlds, within worlds, bringing back in their words these glimpses of things that without them would remain unseen. Unsaid. The sign of a master poet is that they break something open inside of us, and then somehow piece us back together again. This book is certainly breaking and remaking me.