Nocturnes

In this collection of poems sourced from a French translation of Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour, Cathleen Allyn Conway lures her readers into a world of lush language and dark imaginings that few will want to leave. We are invited to watch “a film that spread out of the coffin/into the living room/lighting the candles,” and we submit, happily. – Sarah Nichols, author of These Violent Delights and Hexenhaus Conway’s poems inhabit a space of anxious beauty, where prettiness turns to danger, where what appeals to the senses cannot be trusted. Meticulously crafted and full of tension, the poems of Nocturnes are not sweet reverie but dark imaginings, like sweet-flowered vines that strangle—“a lesson on the dangers of the garden”.

– Jessica L. Walsh, author of Book of Gods and Grudges In Nocturnes, Cathleen Allyn Conway assembles a detailed and wild curio cabinet of memorable poems, shelves filled with the magical, the everyday and the fantastic, where “silver cigarettes in a cup” sit next to “found chandeliers, linen tureens” or “banana scales” maybe a “white blouse.” These poems open you to healing, they confirm how memories are complicated, they remind you that, when you gaze into the golden hour of the past, remember to “soften your ears. The sky is busy.”

—Trapper Markelz, author of Childproof Sky