Review: A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst

Hosho McCreesh
Poetry
369 pages
6” x 9” perfect-bound trade paperback
Review Copy: PDF ARC
ISBN 978–1467579131
First Edition
Artistically Declined Press
USA
Available HERE
$14.00
Review originally published on 1/30/15

Last New Year’s Eve, I watched Anderson Cooper on CNN, opened a bottle of wine, and read through my collection of Bukowski poetry. After all, when you’re stuck home — alone — on New Year’s Eve, what else do you do? As 2014 ended, and I read through A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst, I felt the same calmness wash over me, despite how tragic this year was. If there ever was a year to imbibe, it was 2014. The nice thing was, when I drank while reading Hosho McCreesh’s brilliant collection of poems, I wasn’t drinking alone:

[…] And the night passes
effortlessly like that, all
drinks, and laughs, and
good times […]

There are good times to be had in this collection, to be sure, but also the dangers of having a routine of night after night of good times. McCreesh’s collection is one that, if the reader took each line as a literal story, spins the dangerous tale of someone on the journey toward being an alcoholic. Your journey, since the poems are all narrated in the second person. Much like when I read Bukowski, I found myself getting caught up in the beauty, and the tragedy, of what was being said:

[…] 3am in some
war-zone flat,
two girls on your lap
as you scream along with Prince […]

There were no surprising truths here. Instead, there were snapshots of moments that accurately portray the tragedy that often comes with being alive today. The tragedy of the mundane, of being:

[…] pissed at yourself
for not just
staying
home.