The Madness of Empty Spaces:
The Dark Poetry of David E. Cowen
Weasel Press, 2014, 61p
Introduction by Danel Olson
ISBN: 978-069-233-2962
A Review by Gene Stewart
A poetry collection featuring cover art, front and back, by the poet, published by a small press imprint, introduced by an academic; let’s examine it.
The cover art, in black and white, is moody and evocative. This matches the poetry, which also has the grace to root itself in reality. Some of the poems herein are gritty, others cynical, and a few eerie. All are tactile, realistic, and noir. Not that metaphor is not present. Merely that everything is rooted in everyday things, daily sensations, quotidian thoughts.
A trial attorney, David E. Cowen is rooted in Galveston, TX. His tropes stem from what he experiences and has considered. Evoking crossed purposes, thwarted ambitions, and the dust of lost desires, his work here shares a mood with noir detective fiction and no-nonsense suspense. Tricks are eschewed in favor of concrete correlatives chosen carefully to bring the reader to a grounded, context-heavy realization.
“Seven Hauntings In Seven Storms: Galveston, TX”, a favorite of mine, offers glimpses of murders and crimes at a house spanning the years 1900 to 2008. Each vignette is chosen perfectly to reveal both situation and character. Each syllable carries us inexorably through a hall of horrors. It is like a dirge dancing a macabre with a medieval ballad, all in language plain enough for the crime pages of a newspaper.
“The Choice of the Last Child of Proveglia” shows us a parallel to the notorious Italian death isle, where plague victims were sent to die. Echoes of both defiance and despair captured by murderous intent are offered in counterpoint to a little girl’s insight as aristocrats are ushered toward execution. Passing through doors, led by axemen, she chooses instead of freedom to run toward another door, another axe, and certain death. Is it release? Is it fulfillment?
I read this book in one sitting, mesmerized. The poems kept drawing me back to examine how this was done, why that was cited, what words carried the most impact. “Palmetto Ghosts” gives us a tour of a battlefield long forgotten, a place where spirits mingle with fog in a confused bleat of pain and death. “Prayer to the Killer of Children” makes explicit our cries into the void for surcease and understanding, cries never answered. The titular poem, “The Madness of Empty Spaces” discusses abandonment by theological concepts, ours and the deities we create.
“Gothique” mixes love, sex, and death with predatory chills and false assurances. It is overtly a poem of horror, not merely darkness.
Taken together, this is a consistently excellent collection throughout. Each poem pulls you into a moment, an insight, a world. As they flow together this collection demonstrates a unified effect, if not quite a theme. It gives the impression of a down-to-earth mind perceiving the eyes in the shadows most of us pass by every day. Definitely worth seeking out, The Madness of Empty Spaces by David E. Cowen did not quite make this year’s Stoker Award final ballot, but exposure to it lingers. Find a copy and see for yourself what quality dark poetry is all about.
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