Customer Reviews

Dark Familiar: Poems

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Dark Familiar is an anthology of impressively crafted free-verse poetry about the transition between life and death, and the unknowable hereafter. Poignant, meant to be read in silence and soberly contemplated, Dark Familiar is Aleda Shirley's first collection in nearly ten years, and contains the emotion and the harsh perspective that concrete awareness of entropy brings to one's personal daily life. A grim yet powerful collection. The Asphodel Fields: In its liquid form water's incompressible / & yet a river moves not only through space / but through time. When I lived by the river // it rose ten feet in a single night - there / were petals on the surface, carnelian flecks / from a Judas tree. A boy waved from a ledge // of blue light, but i must have been the bridge, / or a barge lifted to eye-level by the flood. / Where is he now. And you, where are you.

I was heartbroken to learn that Aleda Shirley passed away in 2007, and I'm even more disappointed that she did not receive more recognition when she was alive.

Shirley deftly outlines her history of loss, pain, regret, and personal growth. Her internal emotions seem are lyrical, eloquent and clear to the point of tangibility.

These poems helped me through a very difficult time in my life, and I would recommend to anyone who finds themselves at a figurative "fork-in-the-road"- Shirley expertly navigates both the beauty and the dull ache that come with being caught between two worlds.

"And the world
fulgent & resolute, clicks on, its vision the same
as a casino's: to keep the wheels turning."