Title: Chasers of the Light: Poems from the Typewriter Series
Author: Tyler Knott Gregson
Page Count: 144
My Rating: 3.5 TURTLES: A very enjoyable read, I recommend you check it out.
Description:
The epic made simple. The miracle in the mundane.
One day, while browsing an antique store in Helena, Montana, photographer Tyler Knott Gregson stumbled upon a vintage Remington typewriter for sale. Standing up and using a page from a broken book he was buying for $2, he typed a poem without thinking, without planning, and without the ability to revise anything.
He fell in love.
Three years and almost one thousand poems later, Tyler is now known as the creator of the Typewriter Series: a striking collection of poems typed onto found scraps of paper or created via blackout method. Chasers of the Light features some of his most insightful and beautifully worded pieces of work—poems that illuminate grand gestures and small glimpses, poems that celebrate the beauty of a life spent chasing the light.
One day, while browsing an antique store in Helena, Montana, photographer Tyler Knott Gregson stumbled upon a vintage Remington typewriter for sale. Standing up and using a page from a broken book he was buying for $2, he typed a poem without thinking, without planning, and without the ability to revise anything.
He fell in love.
Three years and almost one thousand poems later, Tyler is now known as the creator of the Typewriter Series: a striking collection of poems typed onto found scraps of paper or created via blackout method. Chasers of the Light features some of his most insightful and beautifully worded pieces of work—poems that illuminate grand gestures and small glimpses, poems that celebrate the beauty of a life spent chasing the light.
Review:
When the publisher approached me and asked me to read this poetry collection in exchange for an honest review, I was thrilled. My blog does not focus on poetry, but I love it and have dabbled in writing it myself. When I first got it I flipped through the pages and adored the look of poems printed on found paper and his photographs are absolutely stunning. I love that the art of his poetry is that it isn't just the words, but the format as well. I also thought that the poems he created from blacking out all but a few words from old books was really neat and produced some beautiful results.
This book was really close to a full four stars, the art of the formatting I just talked about were almost enough to get it there by itself. Even as I'm writing this review I'm still a bit conflicting, but I'm going with what my impressions were as I was reading this collection. There is no doubt that Gregson is a beautiful writer, his poems have a sort of grace about them, but it is the subject matter that I think weakens some of the poems. The collection is not labelled as a collection of love poems, but that is what the majority of them about. I really enjoyed the few that were not love poems, and enjoyed the majority of those that were, but some of them felt a bit too much like they were saying "you're the only one I'll ever love, I can't breath without you". I'm sure some people find this incredibly romantic, and if I'm sufficiently brought into a story where I think those types of words would be appropriate in a story I wouldn't mind. they way they are presented in some of the poems just seemed a bit overly-dramatic to me.
Overall, this is a beautiful book, the type that I'd leave on a coffee table for visitors to leaf through, or that my alter-ego who runs a coffee shop and cafe would keep in her in-store library. Tyler Knott Gregson is certainly up and coming in the contemporary poetry scene, and I would definitely recommend that you at least check out his Tumblr page where he posts his poems individually. I think it is partly his merging of old and new technologies that makes him such an intriguing artist.
Chasers of the Light: Poems from the Typewriter Series on Amazon
This book was really close to a full four stars, the art of the formatting I just talked about were almost enough to get it there by itself. Even as I'm writing this review I'm still a bit conflicting, but I'm going with what my impressions were as I was reading this collection. There is no doubt that Gregson is a beautiful writer, his poems have a sort of grace about them, but it is the subject matter that I think weakens some of the poems. The collection is not labelled as a collection of love poems, but that is what the majority of them about. I really enjoyed the few that were not love poems, and enjoyed the majority of those that were, but some of them felt a bit too much like they were saying "you're the only one I'll ever love, I can't breath without you". I'm sure some people find this incredibly romantic, and if I'm sufficiently brought into a story where I think those types of words would be appropriate in a story I wouldn't mind. they way they are presented in some of the poems just seemed a bit overly-dramatic to me.
Overall, this is a beautiful book, the type that I'd leave on a coffee table for visitors to leaf through, or that my alter-ego who runs a coffee shop and cafe would keep in her in-store library. Tyler Knott Gregson is certainly up and coming in the contemporary poetry scene, and I would definitely recommend that you at least check out his Tumblr page where he posts his poems individually. I think it is partly his merging of old and new technologies that makes him such an intriguing artist.
Chasers of the Light: Poems from the Typewriter Series on Amazon
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