This Hall of Several Tortures - Softcover

Woolley, Reuben

Softcover

ISBN 10: 191221153X ISBN 13: 9781912211531

Publisher: Knives Forks and Spoons, 2020

Synopsis

About this ItemThe item is a book paperback or softbackThe Author Name is Woolley, ReubenThe Title is This Hall of Several TorturesCondition NewOther CommentsPages Count - 106. Binding type - Perfect. Content Language - English Category - POETRY / GeneralWe Use Stock ImagesBecause we have over 2 million items for sale we have to use stock images, this listing does not include the actual image of the item for sale. The purchase of this specific item is made with the understanding that the image shown in this listing is a stock image and not the actual item for sale. For example: some of our stock images include stickers, labels, price tags, hyper stickers, obi's, promotional messages, signatures and or writing which may not be available in the actual item.When possible we will add details of the items we are selling to help buyers know what is included in the item for sale. The details are provided automatically from our central master database and can sometimes be wrong. Books are released in many editions and variations, such as standard edition, re-issue, not for sale, promotional, special edition, limited edition, and many other editions and versions. The Book you receive could be any of these editions or variations. If you are looking for a specific edition or version please contact us to verify what we are selling. Gift Ideas This is a great Christmas gift idea. Hours of Service We have many warehouses, some of the warehouses process orders seven days a week, but the Administration Support Staff are located at a head office location, outside of the warehouses, and typically work only Monday to Friday. Location ID 555ziHaveit SKU ID 158645235

About this title

Review

I’ve never read a collection where the spacing between words works so well. That phrase is so often a cliche, but not here. The sense of haunting, of an absence (“i dance on horizons and don’t cast shadows”) then a fleeting presence - is handled brilliantly, with the reader aware (just enough) of multiple voices. The repeated “she said” is used eerily and almost hypnotically, and the writing has moments of intense beauty, but never enough to settle the reader. This is “experimental” writing that works – it reads wonderfully, but not easily. Oddly, I was reminded throughout of Ken Smith’s lonely sequences – the fragmentation and moments of intense lyricism, but with a constant energy. Nothing is framed or neat, but the whole thing is brilliantly constructed. 

 

– Paul Sutton

 

 

There are songs and stories in this hall of several tortures but the singing is cold and overlaid with screams while tales are told by skulls in a land where gorgons walk in comfort. The whole scenario is a grimly dystopian one and even a ‘shining dance (of possible)’ fades at the end when all the rooms are empty and only the sounds of crushed glass and the rattle of knuckles and bones offer music for an exit. Not a comfortable read but stunning in its poetry – the range of tone from reflective to bitterly hard-hitting, the versatile shifts and sounds of language, the technical skill that uses fragmentation and the incomplete to create spaces for the reader’s imagination to fill, the layering that builds so subtly on mystery and ambiguity into a ‘tapestry of strange’.  Confront the horrors, explore the spaces. This collection is unique.

 

 

– Mandy Pannett

 

 

A sizzling sequence of lyric poems that weave a unique path through an emotive dynamic of surprising beauty and potent anger

 

– Tim Allen

Edition details

• Publisher: Knives Forks and Spoons
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 191221153X
• ISBN 13: 9781912211531
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 106