{"id":7465,"date":"2020-04-09T18:34:23","date_gmt":"2020-04-09T22:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=7465"},"modified":"2020-04-09T18:34:23","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T22:34:23","slug":"book-review-choking-back-the-devil-poems-by-donna-lynch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/book-review-choking-back-the-devil-poems-by-donna-lynch\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Choking Back the Devil: Poems by Donna Lynch"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

Choking Back the Devil: Poems <\/em>by Donna Lynch<\/p>\n

Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2019<\/p>\n

ISBN: 978-1-947879-12-6<\/p>\n

Available: Paperback, Kindle<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the Afterword to Choking Back the Devil: Poems, <\/em>Donna Lynch describes how the reader\u2019s \u201cimmersion\u201d in horror poetry can be \u201can ax right to the torso\u201d and more intense than the horror fiction which she also writes. This poetry proves her right. Lynch has created nightmarish psychological landscapes full of emotional pain and torture and menacing nameless and faceless figures that are humans, monsters, and witches. Her words reveal monstrous truths like the real life horrors that are so bad we might want to believe they could only be fictional.<\/p>\n

The central poems in this collection focus on capturing the trauma of torment in terrifying emotional detail. The poet keeps the spotlight on feelings rather than actions. There is despair here and a loss of faith, even in God, as well as symbolic images of mutilated internal organs and \u201chollowed\u201d victims running in terror. In the most ghastly of these poems, the title poem, a body is invaded by the devil. As if that is not enough, Lynch does not spare the reader from imagining being the random victim of a callous human monster in the aptly named poem \u201cIt Just Wasn\u2019t Your Night\u201d and contemplating the chilling fate of each child in \u201cSacrifice\u201d who is \u201cchosen\u201d to suffer in place of the rest. But, neither does she leave out those who turn their horrific memories into weapons, anger, and even a sisterhood of sorts as is the case in \u201cLegend\u201d and \u201cHoney.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other poems move in different directions while maintaining the same emotional content. \u201cIf You Love Me\u201d uses terrifying thoughts that a rational person might only think but never seriously enact to show how it feels when a victim of a manipulative love turns what should be doubt in someone else into self-doubt.\u00a0 A clever little poem, \u201cWreckage,\u201d uses a mirroring word effect in two stanzas to show alternative perspectives in a relationship, and \u201cMy Incomplete Children\u201d makes one think of Anne Bradstreet\u2019s \u201cThe Author to Her Book\u201d with Lynch\u2019s poems being the horror version since her poems, as she says, \u201chave teeth.\u201d And, indeed, they do. Highly Recommended<\/p>\n

Contains: body horror, posssession, violence.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Nova Hadley<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Editor’s note: <\/strong>Choking Back the Devil: Poems<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Choking Back the Devil: Poems by Donna Lynch Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2019 ISBN: 978-1-947879-12-6 Available: Paperback, Kindle   In the Afterword to Choking Back the Devil: Poems, Donna Lynch describes how the reader\u2019s \u201cimmersion\u201d in horror poetry can be \u201can ax right to the torso\u201d and more intense than the horror fiction which she<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2594,357,4397,4396,181,2093,1178],"class_list":["post-7465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-body-horror","tag-bram-stoker-awards","tag-choking-back-the-devil","tag-donna-lynch","tag-horror-genre","tag-horror-poetry","tag-human-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7465"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7467,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7465\/revisions\/7467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}