REVIEWS:
“These powerful metaphorical poems in Yuan Changming's new collection, Dark Phantasms, push the limits of language and the bizarre in a Lorca dreamscape with echoes of Poe and Orwell. In “Self Abuse,” a man self-decapitates and tries to barbecue his own head with human hair. Or neighbors keep renovating their house with blood and body parts of infants, and “No one knows / What kind of house they are trying to have.” Yuan fiercely executes these surrealist dark metaphors with brilliant imagination and imagery.”
“These powerful metaphorical poems in Yuan Changming's new collection, Dark Phantasms, push the limits of language and the bizarre in a Lorca dreamscape with echoes of Poe and Orwell. In “Self Abuse,” a man self-decapitates and tries to barbecue his own head with human hair. Or neighbors keep renovating their house with blood and body parts of infants, and “No one knows / What kind of house they are trying to have.” Yuan fiercely executes these surrealist dark metaphors with brilliant imagination and imagery.”
-- Koon Woon, award-winning poet and author of Truth in Rented Rooms and Water Chasing Water
“Yuan Changming's work combines mythology with technology, utilizing a modern voice that still shows evidence of ancient wisdom. The words are moving in subtle ways that leave the reader filled with quietly obtrusive thoughts.”
-- Brent Armour, Editor-in-Chief of HelloHorror
“Changming’s dark and twisted imagery will have you cozying up to a hellfire furnace as his fantasies set your neighbourhoods and your realities ablaze.”
-- Allen Qing Yuan, author of Traffic Light and editor of Poetry Pacific
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Yuan Changming, nine-time Pushcart and two-time Best of the Net nominee, is the author of six chapbooks [including Wordscaping (Halifax: Fowlpox Press, 2016)], and the world's most widely published poetry creator who speaks Mandarin but writes in English. Growing up in a remote village, Yuan started to learn the English alphabet as an ESL student in Shanghai at age nineteen and published several monographs on translation before leaving China. With a PhD in English from the University of Saskatchewan, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan at poetrypacific.blogspot.ca and runs Poetry Pacific Press in Vancouver, Canada. Since mid-2005, he has had poetry appear in nearly 1,400 literary journals and/or anthologies across 40 countries, which include Best of the Best Canadian Poetry: Tenth Anniversary Edition (2017), BestNewPoemsOnline, London Magazine, and Threepenny Review.
32 pages, 20 poems
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