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Maybe I am a little biased towards poetry but god, this was so good. I've read Pleasure Dome so I've read this collection already but it was different coming back to this. I don't think I've read a lot of war poetry but Komunyakaa manages to evoke extremely sorrowful feelings. I love how 'camouflaging the chimera' is the first poem in this collection & it just makes you feel as if you're one of them.

unaware our shadows have untied
from us, wandered off
& gotten lost.

The moon cuts through
night trees like a circular saw
white hot.

loving the weight of the shotgun
that will someday dig his grave. 

I'm not going to comment on the writing because this was a translation.
This was definitely not something that I usually read but I enjoyed it. Being magical realism I hadn't expected obviously that we'd delve deeper into the whole time travel aspect. The characters were incorporated well into the story. I liked how everyone was involved. I liked all of the stories except for Fumiko & Goro's only because of the stereotypical portrayal of the characters. This was nothing too extraordinary, though. 

This isn't for you if you don't like lyrical (borderline pretentious prose). I liked the prose & Vi Khi Nao's writing a lot. The end especially was beautifully written. Catholic's perspective in my opinion was the best out of all; it was harrowing & poignant. BUT that bit with Charleen was a HUGE let down because it came out of nowhere & was NOT needed. 

i was going to give this 2 stars but why bother? it's... underwhelming; i was bored to tears, the plot picked up in the last 20 pages or so and i did not care about the characters at all. vasya, lyoshka, & sasha were more tolerable than the rest. but... nothing more, i just DID NOT CARE for anything or anyone.

that being said, the author did a brilliant job at setting up the story, the environment, & the atmosphere. i'm not well-versed with russian folklore so it was good to know about that & it 'seemed' incorporated nicely into the story. 

i came across this book through lithub, premises sounded promising, the length was really short, and so i decided to read it. it was good, to the extent that i ended up reading it within 2 days (regardless of the length) because what really hooked me was the writing and the atmosphere that was created. it kind of pulled me in and i was looking forward to reading more. the writing is alluring and enticing, and i didn't know if i wanted to categorize it as gothic lit because it kind of felt like that, although subtly, but i did not see people taking it that way until i found Barba's interview on granta and he believes that it can be considered gothic:

"I was more conscious of the Greek than the gothic tradition, but it is true that for many reasons the book can be considered gothic."

the book …

i am only subtracting 1 star because i think i would've enjoyed this a lot more (A LOT MORE) if i were a new yorker. people are right when they say that this collection reads more like a 'journal-entry' kind of thing rather than poetry but then... what essentially constitutes a poem anyway? so, yes, my enjoyment was hindered by not being able to explicitly imagine what places, streets, alleys  o'hara talks about but this isn't me being superior by emphasizing the particularity of his work; only acknowledging the lack of that complete experience that o'hara did.

anyway, i absolutely adored the lack of structure & formality in his poems & the joyous element of every single thing he does & writes about. these poems are casual, brief, often funny, & somewhat pointless and are refreshing. 

Mary Shelley really did a commendable job on this book especially considering her age and the society she was placed in. However, this book didn't stant out to me as much as I hoped it would.