The Defunct Heat City Literary Review

Does anyone remember the high quality, short lived Heat City Literary Review? It was a really nice literary journal, based if I recall correctly in Boston. It seemed very promising. Their first couple of issues were very high quality using professional materials, excellent professional perfect bound glossy covers, about 90 pages. I loved their covers …

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My Year In Books: 2023

Every year I write an end-of-year post about my annual Goodreads Reading Challenge and the report titled My Year in Books. It's been an annual tradition for nearly a decade and it's that time of year! Fortunately for readers of this post, I don't have the time to write a longish analysis as I typically …

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On Thomas Ligotti’s Book, Death Poems

I'd been told I would love this book, I guess because I’ve had some “horror poetry” books published over the years. I do like the themes, tone, morbid world view, but that doesn’t make this guy a good writer nor this poetry remotely good, professional or successful in accomplishing what the author appears to be attempting. It fails, but is salvageable. Read to discover one area Ligotti falters in while successful authors with some similarities are mentioned as differentiations that could inspire Liigotti to up his game, improve his writing and hence his poetry and become more effective at what he does without losing "his voice."