Description

Winner of the Codhill Poetry Award for 2018, this collection unveils surrealistic imagery and apocalyptic moments to explore cityscapes external and internal.

In The Now Dark Sky, Setting Us All on Fire, Robert Krut unveils surrealistic imagery and apocalyptic moments that encroach on his cityscapes. Entering his urban vision of off-kilter fingerprint police, helix fireworks, and lockboxes replete with "unsewn / buttons from the shirts of dead men" ("The Vault"), we are invited to witness how "daylight peels silence / off the sides of buildings" to reveal vampire teeth and arrows ("Phantasmagoria at Six AM"), how "every single body on the street / turns to paper" ("At This Very Moment"). Krut dismantles the world around us and in turn remakes it into something dark yet alive, a place seething with desire, where "A thousand leaves are worth one wish" ("This All Starts With You, and This All Ends With You").