Like a Cigarette After Sex
I received a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.
The Former Lives of Saints is a collection of poetry by Damian Rucci and Ezhno Martin, and it’s one of the realest collections I’ve read. I didn’t know what to expect going into this book. I know Rucci’s work from various social media accounts and videos posted, and I’ve been a fan of his for some time. As for Martin’s poetry, this is the first I’ve experienced.
The book is split up in two sections. One for Rucci’s work, and the other for Martin’s. The moment I opened this book, I was punched in the face, and as I moved through each page, their fists got so hard I couldn’t feel anything afterward. And when I say that, I don’t mean it as a bad thing. When I say that, I mean the collection is so immersive, and so raw and sometimes painfully truthful to read, that it becomes overwhelming. You just can’t put it down. You can’t put it down because the writing is solid. You are sucked into this book for the whole ride, and it’s not always a smooth one. The book is like having a cigarette after sex. You’re exhausted after all the work you put in when reading each page, and when you reach the final poem of it, you get your release and need something to calm you down.
Damian’s work isn’t polite. It’s not meant to be. His section is blunt and fearless. When you read the first few poems of his section, the poet grabs you by your shirt, gets right in your face and he holds you until it’s over. The reader is forced through a life they’ve never lived, but experience it through the words of this poet. He doesn’t baby you with flowery language. He doesn’t distance you from moments of desperation, like in the poem “When Smoking Dope in a Hotel Room,” when you reach that last line, “tomorrow we will have a home,” you are hit with an unimaginable pain. A pain you can’t comprehend unless you’ve lived it. It knocked the breath right out of my lungs when I got to that poem. In “Half Breaths” we get just a sliver of calm. And that’s life. You go and go and go, and maybe you catch a break, enough to catch your breath before you’re thrown into another round of chaos. It’s all chaos with little breaks in between, much life in Rucci’s portion of the book.
One thing I love about Martin’s work is the format of the poems. The experimental use of lines in each poem really forces the reader to wander into each word carefully. It forces us to pay attention to all the details, to grab the whole message of the poem while taking in all the little pieces along the way. And like Rucci, Martin’s work is fierce. The poet doesn’t hold your hand. The section gets real, fast and you can’t stop it, you can’t pump the brakes. Each poem comes at you fast, like life. “I was only sweet tomorrows/that hadn’t happened yet…” from the poem “Better You than Me,” here we are thrown into the desperation of wanting to fix yourself, wanting to be whole while being so goddamn broken. We are thrown into this constant mixture of fear and loathing, and again it becomes overwhelming, but the words are so fucking right! In the final poem, “Powers Whiskey,” the poet writes, “I say It’s good for me to be crazy like this/cause I ain’t got no home but chaos/I can’t admit to myself that I’m just bad/and maybe you’re bad for me.” The struggle with addiction isn’t a walk in the fucking park. You fall, you get back up, you fall again, etc. You try to move on, yet that lingering sensation your body desires is just right behind you. It’s the devil in your shadow that feels so right when you know it’s wrong.
The Former Lives of Saints is one of the best books of poetry I’ve read this year, and I was fortunate to grab a review copy of it. It’s a book I can’t recommend enough. The book is available on Amazon.
