STORIES FROM THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Haye’s poetry collection roams far afield chronicling varied experiences.

Described by the author as a book written in response to “exposure to numerous stimuli,” this collection is said to be composed of “stories,” but the pieces more closely resemble a series of short poems. They detail a wide range of phenomena, from what seems to be the wishful reincarnation of a deceased lover as an adopted baby in “Trading Life” to the pleasures and torments of one’s favorite canine companion in “The Retriever.” Many of the poems register as motivational mantras that exhort the reader to grab life by the proverbial horns and let one’s voice ring loud; in “Your Story,” the speaker urges the reader to identify themself in all that surrounds them and to seek their history in their own bodies, while the title of “Do Not Let Them Take Your Newborn Mic” plainly states the message of the poem. The latter’s transparency is rare in these works, however—the collection’s main pitfall is a resounding lack of clarity. While the author makes some engaging forays into defamiliarizing language, vagueness emerges as the work’s strongest undercurrent. It often appears that each poem has been primarily constructed to follow a given rhyme scheme rather than being inspired by a concept, sentiment, or experience. When the speaker’s specific preoccupations do appear, the reader’s understanding of them is challenged by a lack of coherence and continuity between lines. In “Musical Chairs,” the speaker seems to gesture toward sexual violence but loses the thread in nebulous, seemingly unrelated references to “the easter bunny fight[ing] to inseminate eggs” and “an extra limb” that is “cooked at the buffet.” The speaker leaps from one image to the next without connective tissue justifying their painful distance.

Imaginative verse though frustratingly vague in execution.