Shadow Work: Poems - Softcover

Warner, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1950495035 ISBN 13: 9781950495030

Publisher: Lucid House Publishing, 2019

Synopsis

Shadow Work is an exploration of the shadow self, which refers to an unconscious aspect of the self that the ego does not identify. In his chapbook Woke, Warner’s surrealist writing style paints a vivid picture of dreamscapes and phantasmagorias. In his debut full length collection Shadow Work, Warner realizes the actual awakening of his shadow self. In Jungian psychology, encountering one’s shadow is central to the process of individuation. Warner invites the reader to witness memories of his father and their complicated relationship, as well as other traumas and triumphs that have collectively formed his shadow. The reader steps into the light with Warner as he reconciles the unshakable and the formerly unspeakable with his hopes and dreams of a boundless future. Shadow Work is a poetic narrative of baptism by fire and subsequent rebirth.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Warner was born in Augusta, Ga. He is the author of Shadow Work
as well as the chapbooks Woke and And Sometimes Why. He was a finalist in
the 2018 Wergle Flomp Poetry Contest, and his poetry has been featured
in Rust + Moth, Pretty Owl Poetry, and elsewhere. He has received
scholarships for the Prague Summer Program for Writers, Winter
Tangerine Review's Online Workshop, and the Adroit Journal's Summer
Mentorship Program. He lives around Atlanta, Ga, and likes dogs better.

Review

"Shadow Work weaves fanciful and dark dreamscapes to impart a transformative experience of personal growth and discovery. Warner transports the reader into a psychological landscape where barriers between thoughts and reality are blurred and broken - the end result is a work with a heart of Wittgenstein, veins of Jungian psychology, all hung on the skeleton of Sylvia Plath. In the first of Shadow Work's three sections, we are introduced to themes of family, shadow, and escape. Immediately, "Fissure in the Endless Maw" brings us into an unsettling world: "Water restlessly ripples./Albino fat fish streak in their lunar allure./I wait for a tug on the line."
The second section evolves the themes of the first by providing vivid portrayals of escape and the loneliness that can accompany it. "People are part of the landscape./Are questions more important than their answers?" ("Symbolic Language").
After trying to escape from shadow in the second section, the third section does the heavy existential work of displaying the process on coming to a place of harmony with that shadow. Ultimately, Warner shows stories from his own process of self-discovery and self-acceptance through dark and hauntingly mystical language. It's a book that will leave you with more questions after each read and that's the intent, a beautiful paradox and a beautiful spell to watch being cast." - Chris West

"I am a hole that is whole.
And still, I can be undone with a single word, which I am grateful for."
In Jungian psychology, the shadow self represents one's fears, impulses, and repressions; in these emotive works, poet Warner dwells within, then understands and integrates with his shadow. In this three-part progression--Disintegration, Awareness, and Integration--some poems treat with Warner's conflicted relationship with his father, opening with "Fissure in the Endless Maw" in which a fishing trip reveals his sense that he has "killed an angry child and opened its wound to the world," with "Dad" symbolized as darkness. As awareness sets in, Warner opines in "Symbolic Language" that, "Remove names, and things are just things." With integration, he realistically recalls his father's shocking sins, yet finds comfort in a "Summer Night" by realizing, "Simply, I exist," and contemplates a new year that "begins like a poem" in the piece "New Year, 2019: Captain of the Sadness Boat".

With this debut collection, Warner deftly constructs free verse that can leave the reader hanging, haunted like its author, or resolve all problems in a few well-chosen words. He may make rational observations, such as that "Fall's coming appears as a leaving" (from "Wayah Bald"), or plunge into verbal rhapsody: "Aureole of white moonlight stands next to reaching pines" (from "Sky Painted with Leaves"). As his shadow self, Warner seems truly disturbed, referring once to a companion's head as an "island in fog" and creating a vivid, at times bitterly humorous encounter with Jack London in a bar, converting the famous creator of White Fang into a wolf and the poet's wife into a wolfish female who has a roving eye. As Warner gradually emerges into awareness and integration, a colder portrait of "the man I've called father" emerges, combined with a quietly optimistic view of better experiences to come. Those who appreciate poems of subtle vision and deep, at times agonizing, self-exploration will savor Warner's work." - US Review of Books

"Shadow Work is a haunting collection of pensive poetry that should garner Daniel Warner both attention and respect in the world of verse. He blends the modern and the mystical, offering up eloquent metaphors and thought-provoking, gut-shot lines that resonate and build through each poem. This collection is an existential carousel and a dark love note to life, with the occasional slice of humor between reverent pondering. Bouncing from the mundane microcosm to the deepest mysteries, Warner asks hard questions, demanding attention and patience, but rewarding both, as only good poetry can." Self-Publishing Review, ★★★★½

"In this thoughtful and surreal collection, nature dreams and hypnotizes; Warner pays careful attention to sound and soundlessness, to the self and the world, the distance between the thing and the thought of it. Shadow Work is for the reader who needs night and silence and a sense of safety. It will help you "crawl out of the life you have been painting." - Danielle Zaccagnino, Poetry Editor of Third Point Press

"Shadow Work is a wild and haunting investigation of the self with turns of phrase that forbid as they delight. Warner uses language as a metaphor for creation: the creation of the self, the creation of the memories that build the self, the creation of an other as we hold up unwieldy mirrors to the world. In Shadow Work, words are the arbiter of memories, which bleed into each other in Warner's dreamy meditations on childhood, suburbia, self discovery. And words force meaning out of the silent and indifferent churn of nature. Stagnant mornings that twitch alive with the first cup of coffee, that lock into the ordinary with their familiar parables of survival, that sometimes produce little resistances and beauties, which Warner observes with a playful gaze. And yet the play doesn't seem like play at all. Shadow Work deftly conveys a world weariness, something yelping at dawn as the night becomes day, and then another day. Shadow Work ultimately leads us through a landscape of hunger so we may arrive sated. The hunger for an absent father leads us to the desire to be present. The grasping at a memory that explains nothing leads us to sit with the dramas unfolding before us. The need for self possession, and Warner's dedication to self excavation, is at the heart of Shadow Work as the world unfolds and folds, collapses and expands, obscures and reveals." - germ lynn, author of What You Call

About this edition

• Publisher: Lucid House Publishing
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1950495035
• ISBN 13: 9781950495030
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112
• Editor: West Chris
• Illustrator: Delort Nicolas