Enjoy Oblivion
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“ENJOY OBLIVION is a chilling obituary. It is rare to find such honest emotion. This is a remarkably innovative work of poetry and art.” |
“There’s nothing but truth here. It’s like cursing someone out and having them say that one thing, that one simple line that cuts you to the bone.” |
“ENJOY OBLIVION is a necrology, where each brief poem is a notice, a blunt nail, a shovel of dirt on the coffin.” |
“ENJOY OBLIVION will have you reaching for your children and holding onto them as though they were your last breath.” |
“Enjoy Oblivion is short, but sometimes the things that need to be said are not long, drawn-out treatises about pain and loss and anger, but simple biting stares and the razor-sharp insights. Wolfgang Carstens is a master storyteller, a poet who doesn't mince words. No, he grinds the shit out of them. Enjoy Oblivion is ostensibly a final farewell to a father who fucked it all up. The catharsis comes in a slow exhale when the words are done.” |
“Enjoy oblivion: be brave and stare into the bare bone meaning. One of three things will happen. It will ricochet bone deep in you if you have ever experienced the death of a person with whom you shared unfinished business. Or it will instill a profound motivation in you to never go to bed mad, finishing off each day resolved. Finally, you may wish to use it as your own manifesto to let go of someone who never deserved your love.” |
“When a parent dies, some folks go through those five stages of grief taught in psychology courses—denial, anger, bargaining, and so on. In ENJOY OBLIVION, Wolfgang Carstens skips straight ahead to acceptance, mixed with equal parts bitterness and gallows humor, saying goodbye to his father with two middle fingers held high. This is the obituary you hope nobody ever writes about you.”
—Matt Galletta, The Ship is Sinking
“Much in art aims towards catharsis but there’s no real healing here just yet. The best the poet gets out of this and perhaps the most important piece to take on the remaining journey of life is his freedom. When this book sits in your gut kicking up bile after ingestion you’ll understand just how important that kind of freedom is.”
—Devin McGuire, After the Hunt
“Karlsson’s subdued, absurd caricatures in this collection often represent Carstens as a lonely child staring blankly at a ball or puck. Others show the old man angry, guzzling beer, or as in the illustration for the poem ‘I was’, his dad indifferently kicks the boy’s soccer ball away as he cuddles his new girlfriend, Wolf & his mother looking at them from the distance as the new couple depart. Karlsson’s drawings are unique & add a curious layer of existential ennui to Carstens’ work.”
—George Anderson, Bold Monkey
“Focused. Hateful. Touching. Enjoy Oblivion shoves the reader to the foot of a deathbed, then pulls back the threadbare sheet. Carstens exposes the body. Karlsson shades in the wrinkles and age spots. The reader is left to sort through the emotions.”
—RL Raymond, Sonofabitch Poems
“Enjoy Oblivion is a series of spare, finely sharpened poems dealing with the death of a father. The pieces are unflinching and absent of mawkish sentiment. They are cathartic and crafted with pain, lingering long after the final page is turned.”
—William Taylor Jr., The Blood of a Tourist
REVIEWS
by Stephen T. Berg, Grow Mercy
by Matthew J. Hall, Screaming with Brevity
by Rusti Lehay, Rat Creek Press
by Pirjo Saloniemi, Boklysten
by Zack Wilson, Lone Striker
by George Anderson, Bold Monkey
by Devin McGuire, After the Hunt
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