EXTENDED REVIEW

The Ruined City (chapbook) by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Editor of the long-running poetry 'zine Dreams and Nightmares and a well-respected speculative poet, David C. Kopaska-Merkel offers varied and consistently interesting verse in The Ruined City, a chapbook of ten poems,  two of which, "Dead Skies" and "This Morning," are not previously published. 

The first poem in the chapbook, "Hope" is a quick, vivid, and shiver-inducing piece.  Well worth reading.

In "Burnt Offering," sexual and culinary temptation confront the poem's narrator in in a fiery package too hot for him to handle.  After a few readings, I was left wondering if it was not just the object of the narrator's desires that was more (or less) than human.   

"Lich Light" depicts a vivid and almost Lovecraftian crypt exploration in second person -- a familiar scenario but effectively written.

"This Morning" is a melancholy and poignant depiction of ghostly love -- one of the stronger pieces in this chapbook.     

The pulp-flavored style of "Carmen Believed that She was Being Followed" is both evocative and accomplished, but I found the conclusion hard to swallow.

"I Don't Know What You're Having" is a clever and smoothly written exploration of lycanthropic violence and sexual politics -- worthy of several appreciative readings.

In "Some of the Windows of my House," windows and mirrors are used to examine the distant yet fatal interaction of two people over time until reality and unreality and death and life are knotted too closely together to differentiate between them.  An intriguing and deliberately inconclusive poem.

"Dead Skies" effectively depicts the unfortunate consequences of reckless exploration on an alien world -- a sad and evocative poem. 

A phantasm in the ruins of an ancient city leads the archaeologist narrator of "Valley of Years" to an unexpected yet fated place.  Vivid and compelling, this poem is one of the strongest and longest pieces in the chapbook.

The final poem, "Shy Moon," is a cleverly fanciful and teasingly amusing ode to the moon by another bright celestial body.  EM