Black Flowers

<p>In dark lyrical verse <em>Black Flowers</em> follows a speaker from childhood into adulthood as he navigates the animistic world of crows conjurings and winter snows. Doug Ramspeck guides readers through the brutality and beauty found in the natural world: the moonlight "marrow-white severed falling bodily / to grass the hours as permeable as clay" and "dust lifting across the road / as though to form a human shape." By juxtaposing euphony and clear startling imagery Ramspeck's novelistic new collection molds the landscape to reflect the speaker's memories and the challenges of growing up in a dysfunctional family. In the tradition of William Wordsworth <em>Black Flowers</em> brings the flourishes of the Romantics to the grit of the present day.</p>