Tremulous Hinge by Adam Giannelli

I'm not quite sure what to call the spate of poetry flooding in that basically consists of typing diary entries and adding spaces after each "sentence." I've seen it called Tumblr poetry and prose poetry. Regardless of what you want to call it, or whether or not you agree with the nature of its being in vogue, I do not like this style, and for a while it seriously had me questioning whether I even liked modern poetry at all. Well, after reading TREMULOUS HINGE, I can safely say, No, Tumblr poets. It is not me. It is you. I do like poetry.

TREMULOUS HINGE is a prize-winning collection of poems that rely on word-play, vivid visual imagery, and evocative language to convey startlingly poignant ideas. I liked nearly every poem in here except for the ones that looked like word soup (you'll know which ones I mean when I see them). The vocabulary was incredible, the ideas were complex, and the allusions were unusual.

From out of the bare serene, the stars
all striate - and you arch in monochrome,
like a rainbow above
a distant hill in a silent film (27)

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In your letters too,
ellipses

rise like midges (41)

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Already hibiscus
stoops by the roadside, dust-dangled.
The fields resound with stridulations of crickets -
the hills torched with mist (85)

If you, like me, are feeling burned out when it comes to poetry, check out TREMULOUS HINGE. It's quite good.

Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!

4 out of 5 stars