It was with some intrigue I picked up this volume, its promise of ‘dark adult poems of horror, madness and death’ luring me in.
Sadly, the only madness on show here is that of a self-delusional man, and certainly not the glamorous kind he quite probably pretends. It took but one page to recognise that Santini possesses no talent whatsoever, the remainder simply compounding this with every painful, arduous word, prompting the begging of life’s most simple, yet profound question: why?
This is not poetry. The verses are all out of step, bearing no relation by way of rhythm to the pieces they mean to represent. The ideas are the kind of self-indulgent crap you’d find under a teenage goth’s tear-stained pillow following a suicide you care little about, less so now.
Occasionally, one will encounter something that makes one truly angry to recall. The Graveyard Poet is one such example. Diabolical. Truly, diabolical.
