BLOODCOAL & HONEY
Poetry. Published by Washington Writers’ Publishing House (2011). 82 pages. Available at Amazon. Design by Justin Sirois. Cover art by Mark Isaac.
Reviews:
"What I like about Bloodcoal & Honey is the variety of forms for each poem, while still keeping a unified text. Some poems are anecdotal, some lyrical, prose verse, classical--others close to the "language" school. The remarkable outcome is a uniform voice." —Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books
When I find myself unaccountably crying as I reach the end of a collection of poems, when the combined weight of the poet's felt human presence and the loss seeping through the poems brings tears, I know something powerful is about. —Naomi Thiers, Little Patuxent Review
Advance praise:
From powerful poems of loss and mourning to the "imperfect decay" of mysterious urban landscapes where wrecking balls can turn a "dying hospital" into "a spaghetti of rebar and boxy rubble," Gutstein's work takes us inside a world of emotional and physical devastation. Transcendence is achieved in Bloodcoal & Honey thanks to Gutstein's restrained and potent use of language, keen intelligence, and careful observation of interior life. —Terence Winch
In Dan Gutstein's Bloodcoal & Honey Detective P points the poem at the reader. It's almost a film noir moment on the page. The names Warren and David haunt this collection. Gutstein's work is dark and violent in places. Some poems tell you--"Don't Move." There is lyrical sorrow in this book but one will discover a love for language beneath the rain. —E. Ethelbert Miller
These poems dwell in the twin worlds of danger and beauty, the way "men sit in the space thunder rushes / to fill" while "a hundred tomatoes [twinkle] on the vine." Gutstein describes the harrowing rhythms of loss but a tender resurgence as well, as if the metals in Bloodcoal are tempered by the curvilinear season of Honey. A book you won't forget. —Sandra Simonds