Wednesday 21 March 2018

Over Glassy Horizons by Nico Reznick


Over Glassy Horizons by Nico Reznick
Published in the UK by B*Star Kitty Press in September 2015.

Where to buy this book:



How I got this book:
Downloaded the ebook from Amazon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This collection features poems written over the past fifteen years, covering such themes as bureaucratic injustice, the indulgence of heartbreak, the tragedies of ageing, the perils of giving power and fame to the wrong people, and the terrifying possibility that we might all be unwitting test subjects for our cats' psychology experiments. 

By turns caustic, irreverent, tragic, philosophical, anarchic and occasionally even sentimental, this first collection features twenty-five poems from an emerging talent, including the popular 'Whimper', a poem for our times in response to Allen Ginsberg's seminal 'Howl'.

I was blown away by Nico Reznick's first novel Anhedonia so was eager to take advantage of a temporary free download of this volume of her poetry entitled Over Glassy Horizons. The twenty-six poems span fifteen years of her writing and a wide range of subjects from advice to other poets to sexual frustration to the mindlessness of modern life to Piers Morgan's American reinvention of himself. I did find the whole collection to be a bit hit and miss for me and didn't feel I completely understood works like 41, but others are surprisingly vivid and inventive.

My personal favourites are Goldfish Smile which examines perceptions of freedom, Starting Over where a couple move house but fail to make a new start, and Paisley Lassie which is a very moving portrait of an elderly woman in a nursing home. Reznick also penned a long poem, Whimper, in response to Allen Ginsberg's famous Howl which I hadn't previously read but have now found online in order to really appreciate Whimper.


Search Lit Flits for more:
Books by Nico Reznick / Poetry / Books from England

2 comments:

  1. I can see how it'd be hit-or-miss if the poems spanned such a wide array of topics and were all so different. Glad you found some good ones though!

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