Kyle Tran Myhre

An epic search for cultural sanity gone awry. Reading and Listening to "Not A Lot of Reasons to Sing, But Enough", Words by Kyle Tran Myhre and Art by Casper Pham, opened up my mind to a whole new genre of poetry. The sci-fi futuristic moon setting was mystical, and you can feel a dark rhythm. The characters were not all human, but they felt a little ancestral - and connected to me somehow. I was not aware it was hip hop style until I read the AMAZING afternotes - which I must admit were as inspiring to me as the quirky stories. The poems felt cool and sparse - and I especially loved the inspirations from the matriarchal elder. There is no denying the impact of the COVID timeline on the themes in this poetic writing. I found the audiobook read by the author in his poetry slam style - 5 star!. Loved the artsy feel of the poems AND the simple almost medieval style drawings. Open this book, and feel the energy of a gallery where a poetry slam is in session.

Thank you to Netgalley and Button Publishing Inc. for the ARC I received in exchange for a fair review.… (more)

An epic search for cultural sanity gone awry. Reading and Listening to "Not A Lot of Reasons to Sing, But Enough", Words by Kyle Tran Myhre and Art by Casper Pham, opened up my mind to a whole new genre of poetry. The sci-fi futuristic moon setting was mystical, and you can feel a dark rhythm. The characters were not all human, but they felt a little ancestral - and connected to me somehow. I was not aware it was hip hop style until I read the AMAZING afternotes - which I must admit were as inspiring to me as the quirky stories. The poems felt cool and sparse - and I especially loved the inspirations from the matriarchal elder. There is no denying the impact of the COVID timeline on the themes in this poetic writing. I found the audiobook read by the author in his poetry slam style - 5 star!. Loved the artsy feel of the poems AND the simple almost medieval style drawings. Open this book, and feel the energy of a gallery where a poetry slam is in session.

Thank you to Netgalley and Button Publishing Inc. for the ARC I received in exchange for a fair review.… (more)

I’ll have to come back here and edit my review when I’ve been able to write a longer or better one, but to sum up; this book is odd and extraordinary.

At the start, I wasn't sure I would like this, and I couldn't understand the setting; we're listening to a robot whose memories were recovered from a post-apocalyptic world, and as we do so we follow 2 poets traveling across the said world, as poet-bards. I'm not clear on that bit, and I will need to read the start again.

Either way, Myhre uses that setting to explore racism, homophobia, poetry, sexism, and violence without naming names. This setting gives him a lot of freedom to explore things, for example, 'Revenge is the best Success' is a great poem, but works even better in this setting rather than a more standard book of poems. The poems on Hen March are great, but an entire book on Hen March may not have worked the way these poems in this setting did and how they made us switch between the past and the present.

I also loved how the poets cross paths with so many unreasonable people and are brushed aside every time they speak the truth; it's indicative of not only the role art has in our lives, but also of how truth still exists, someone does still speak it, even when it looks like the majority doesn't agree with it.

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review this book!… (more)