Limited ascension, Emily
is in bed because she is
Emily. I had thought she was
other things as well. That
was foolish. The voice
you love cannot become
another voice.
– from “Emily as Trees Remain Trees”
We have come a long way since the ode-n’ days. There’s no more Grecian Urn, no more Nightingales, and the West Winds are settled. We’ve been through the Romantics and seen how Poe and Browning and Irving view love through the darkness that may come with it. But sometimes love is just love, and as complicated as it can be, it can move with the normalcy of every day life.
In Darren C. Demaree’s Emily as Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire (Harpoon Books), we see love as it waxes and wanes. We don’t get the love poems of our youth. Instead, we find a couple working on a relationship – because after-all, they are work. Relationships are wonderful and beautiful and trying and difficult and sometimes we don’t always like the person we love, but it’s not something that we can’t overcome. Demaree keeps us grounded. Love is comfortable. Love is the way you look at someone and sometimes:
That point
without liquor
& lingerie,
the front door
of comfortable
love, that
is damn scary.
“Emily as Debris & Sparkle”
It’s hard to write about an honest love without making it corny as hell; however, Darren Demaree breaks the cycle and reminds us that while love has it’s challenges, it’s worth it in the end.
Purchase your copy of Emily as Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire from Harpoon Books.