01/26/2026 Guest Review: Craig Brownlie
- Candace Nola
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
It’s Been A Year, Part 7
Reviews and thoughts on writing with Craig Brownlie
That sounds a little pompous, but it’s been a minute since I’ve done any reviews because 2025 has been a worse year than even 2024, which is saying something on a personal level. But I have kept reading and writing! And this is the last of it until I actually read another book.
Meaningless Cycles in a Glass Prison by Anton Cancre
Scandals by Alex Osman
Endless Now by Ira Rat
Dark poetry doubtless goes back to the first tragedy to strike a prehistoric cave when an angst-ridden tribal member bemoaned the pointlessness of hunting wooly mammoths, especially if it meant killing such a beautiful beast while also watching said beast keel over in its death throes and crush your best friend. Distilled through early 19th century drugs and an amount of ennui equivalent to that cave youth’s anguish, Percy Bysshe Shelley gifted us the beauty of Ozymandias (of “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Fame). Fortunately, Cancre, Osman and Rat stretch their themes beyond such melodrama in the three poetry collections under consideration.
Poetry collections tend to fall into four main categories: chronological (So-and-so’s works, 1920-1937), thematic (poems about skateboarding), or educational (100 poems you ought to know, often filtered by a particular author, style, nation/language, or era). The wildcard is the one put together by the poet who frequently has a theme in mind and a time period (recent poems being foremost).
Meaningless Cycles in a Glass Prison states its theme up front: the various entries are inspired by the 1994 Italian horror comedy Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetery Man). It succeeds splendidly, especially if you follow along through the collection as the movie unspools before you. The poems themselves capture both a personal reaction to film events as well as expanding the emotional thrust of on screen events.
Scandals and Endless Now are brief miniatures collecting powerful poems by talented writers. Osman and Rat write with control and emotion, knowing when to burn and when to simmer. When you think chapbook, these fit right in with whatever Rattle and City Lights are publishing. Avoiding melodrama through well-timed humor, creative structure, and right words in the right place, these works communicate while also asking us to empathize.
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
Psych Ward Blues by Judith Sonnet
We need to talk about West, Thompson and Sonnet in the same breath. They are all masters at sketching three-dimensional characters with precise, straightforward brush strokes. They then take those characters and hand them a knife so we can watch as our expectations and preconceptions are turned sidewise, or worse. West never produced enough work, while Thompson and Sonnet have significant output.
While I’d like to see what else West might have done after Miss Lonelyhearts, I feel fortunate to have plenty of work from the latter two. For me, the most fascinating trait shared by all three is their ability to deliver exactly what you think is coming, they might even tell you it’s on the way, but you still feel the air seep out of the room when it happens. I’d recommend reading all three in a row, but you’ll probably need to touch grass for a couple weeks afterwards.
Fever and Spear (Your Face Tomorrow, # 1) by Javier Marías
Is this the best book I read this year? Maybe. It’s dense and mostly it takes place in a night after a house party. It’s slow-moving and travels about in memory. It’s a translation. It goes on at length about the Spanish Civil War which I’ve read quite a bit about, but you may not have. It’s an espionage tale. Would I have gotten rolling with it if I didn’t already know that the sequels become more action-oriented? (I have not read them, but other reviewers have indicated…) I want everyone to read this book, but I want you to tell me if you throw it across the room instead.
What’s driving Craig apeshit:
The hole in my heart where my best ever editor made her home.
Some of these reviews in this seven-part burst received the last input I received from my wife before she died in September.
Suzanne only wanted success for every artist that she ever met. She wanted you to know that you’re beautiful and brave. She knew that living life and making art are hard and the best artists are trying to illuminate the former while creating the latter so as to reach out and offer an open hand. Don’t forget that every blood splatter, every tear, every regurgitation, every orgasm, every belly laugh, every kiss, and every goosebump that you create are moments of grace because we are right here right now.
Check the bolt on your door before reading these highly recommended books
Bio: Craig recently edited the anthology Five Raging Hearts: Splatterpunk for the Soul. Look for Craig's recent work in Hotel of Haunts, Demons and Death Drops, Wands: Year of the Tarot, and Unspeakable Horrors 3. He has three books out in his Little Books of Pain series: Hammer, Nail, Foot; Thick As A Brick; and A Book of Practical Monsters. These are in addition to the re-release of his middle-grade novel Comic Book Summer. He also has a surprise zombie novel dropping early in 2026. It’s titled Post-Apocalyptic Policing With Frida Kahlo.
Comments