The Poor Broken Poet

With The Poor Broken Poet, A. Amar writes an epic novel-in-verse about one man’s journey through the stages of grief. After his soulmate abandons him, the speaker succumbs to a downward spiral of anger and depression and struggles to rise from the ashes. At turns darkly comic and philosophical, Amar’s speaker is a companionable guide—à la Dante’s Pilgrim—through the inferno. He praises his love’s “delicate lips that stitched the wound” of his painful past only to open it afresh. He paints “with jagged letters” the aftermath of heartbreak and rubs “a pen against a page like kindling in hopes of burning every trace of her within me.” But as the sky begins “to look more like a cage,” Amar’s speaker turns to self-examination: “The lines/ on my face/ have merged/ with the cracks/ in my chest.// And they all/ trace back/ to the day/ you left.” The speaker then sifts through the rubble of bones and memories to redeem not only himself but everyone who has hurt him. This raw and honest collection will appeal to anyone who has experienced loss and assure them, with vivid imagery and stark wisdom, that even though “tears taste like salt rubbed into wounds,” self-love and art will prevail.