davidkm

Unwelcome Guests is the newest full-length collection of dark speculative poetry from SFPA Grand Master and Rhysling winner David C. Kopaska-Merkel

There’s relatability and strangehood in the offerings, some miniature in haiku, a beautiful symmetry and ominous obscurity in the text, dread in the unspoken.
Where some poets hero the impact of the closing line, Kopaska-Merkel’s poems strike in the power between the lines. The reader can never predict what potency the text might disgorge
Unwelcome Guests is a spectral lover’s touch—tender, yet dooming. It’s a perfect marriage of poetry and prose, warm and chilling, starkly intelligent and reachable.
Ideal for anyone.

--Eugen Bacon, Aurealis

At turns disquieting and quirky, playful and poignant, the poems in Unwelcome Guests, like their titular subjects, will stay with you long after you've put the book down and gone to bed (perhaps leaving the light on). A welcome addition to any genre poetry lover's collection!

--Marsheila Rockwell, Rhysling Award-winning poet and author of the Scribe Award-nominated Shard Axe series

The first half of Unwelcome Guests slithers in and out of side-alleys in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, while the second strides avenues of science fiction. Gotta love “June Lockhart’s Recurring Nightmare”. And when “Medusa Buys a Car”. There’s so many environs of speculative poetry visited here, penned with a convincing voice and deft whispers of experimentation.

--Robert Frazier, author of Phantom Navigation

David Kopaska-Merkel’s poetry is like a twisted vein of black gold, with subtle tweaks of darkling humor. He brings to the fore other images that are like watching a glistening pool of oil, beneath which something moves. Whether disturbing sites near Carcosa, the unsuspecting traps of relationships, or unusual visitations, his poetry will inspire, entertain and make you think.

--Colleen Anderson, Rhysling Award winner

MERELY THE BUCKET LIST POEM (ON PAGE 79) IS WORTH THE ACTION ON MY MIND AND MY FUNNY BONES (MORE THAN ONE)

--Edward Mycue, Author of I Am A Fact Not A Fiction

To order a signed and numbered copy from the publisher:

https://weirdhousepress.com/products/unwelcome-guests-by-david-c-kopaska-merkel?_pos=1&_psq=kop&_ss=e&_v=1.0

You can get one directly from me, too ($18 postpaid). I also have PDFs for $3. PayPal to jopnquog [at] gmail [dot] com.

Review of "The Roswell Poems" by Rane Arroyo


Arroyo, Rane, 2008, The Roswell Poems, WordFarm press, www.wordfarm.net, ISBN-10 1-60226-001-X; ISBN-13 978-1-60226-001-6, perfect-bound paperback, 71 p., $12.


One poem or many, the parts of "The Roswell Poems" carry the reader at page-turning pace through a slightly fictionalized version of whatever happened or didn't happen near Roswell back in the 1940s, and its aftermath. The poems are identified as separate, but none have ever been published before, and they are as sequential as chapters in a novel. There are 43 of them, with a halfpage summary of salient facts by way of introduction.

The first poem, "Before the hoopla: 1946," sets the scene with a series of couplets:

A week's sweat work is rewarded
with illuminated beers in dull bars.

Roswell doesn't suspect that it's
to be the New World Bethlehem.


One of the curious things about this collection, or epic, is that many different forms are used, including a screenplay. Yet I didn't feel that the frequent changes in form detracted from the experience. In fact, if anything the combination of disparate elements makes the whole seem like a scrapbook, and therefore more real. This was deliberate. The eclectic format also makes it easy for the author to naturally include a variety of perspectives on events or supposed events.

From "Eyewitnesses"

We leaned against each other and
glorified being human. Invasions,
evasions, visions. We made Heaven
crash! Yes, we were that beautiful.


And from "Enter the cowboy"

The unknown exists without our
permission–how is that possible?

Chaves County is suddenly full of aliens
that don't speak Spanish, don't linger.

Mac's solar plexus has an eclipse.
Our cowboy tries to sleep


So the tangled tale unfolds, following the chronology of known events and pseudoevents, not necessarily becoming more clear about facts, but exposing emotions and conflicts and implications by the barrel. The various parts of the narrative have titles like "Major Jesse Marcel races to the debris site to take notes" and "The world outside of Roswell exists." 6° of separation don't exist between fact and fantasy are between any two people who know or hear anything about Roswell's aliens. There are so many layers of humanity wrapped around a tiny nugget of extraterrestrial suspense, that even if the nugget isn't anything, even if it was never there at all, this no longer matters. Absent emerald giants striding around the planet and vaporizing entire office blocks, this business of alien invasion seems to be a solitary sport, at least where species are concerned.

From "Back to the scene of the cosmic crime"

Brazel sees a Joseph and Mary
and son crossing the desert
(¿Jose, María and singing niño?).
He won't give them up to the enemy,
ah, to his own army.

Arroyo has done an excellent and comprehensive job of taking a muddy and confusing tale and turning it into a pellucid and confusing one. Each one of these poems is a delight to read. Tantalizing glimpses of what might or might not be true develop as one travels through the book, rendering "The Roswell Poems" a sort of ghost story, albeit an inconclusive one. The perfect gift for any spectator at Roswell's banquet.