The two poetry chapbooks of Justin Hyde arrived at my door by way of friend and novelist
Caleb J. Ross. Ever since reading Hyde's books I have been wrestling with the daunting task of faithfully representing them in a book review. Now allow me to immediately back-pedal what I just said. I detest reviews of every stripe that begin with a preface about how hard it was to find comparisons and make judgments about a book; album; movie; what-have-you; and then immediately do so. However, I think I can prove by merit of the
thirteen day wait since announcing plans to cover these books and actually doing so that it has been a bit of a challenge.
What I can say is that I finally found good comparisons for his work not in other poets per se but in musicians. A caveat to that: Justin Hyde's poetry ain't no love songs.
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