Coffee days, whiskey nights is a collection of poetry, prose, and aphorisms that juxtaposes the hopefulness a brand new day can bring with the lingering thoughts that often keep us up into the late-night hours. A lot can happen between the first sip of coffee and the last taste of whiskey, and this book takes a look at the way a single day can change our outlook on everything from relationships with others, to our relationships with ourselves, and everything in between. Ultimately, coffee days, whiskey nights illustrates that no matter how hopeless we may feel at the end of the day, a new one is only a few hours away.
My Review:
Rating: 3/5 stars.
Firstly, I'd like to thank Netgalley and Central Avenue Publishing for the eARC for an honest review!
I'd read a short story by Cyrus Parker, 'Where the Sea Meets the Sky' in the anthology [Dis]connected Volume 1 in March that I enjoyed, so I was interested to read this collection of poetry. I was pleased to see that this poetry collection had a list of trigger warnings in the beginning of the book, such as anxiety and depression, eating disorders, gender dysphoria. I think it's important, especially with poetry, that there are trigger warnings.
I thought that the formatting was interesting, with the white pages being 'coffee mornings' and the black pages being 'whiskey nights'. I thought that the writing was powerful as it was written with complete honesty and we got an insight into Parker's thoughts. It is a very hard hitting book that explores the darker side of being human. By the end of the book I was happy to read more uplifting pieces and could see the growth of the poet as I read through the collection. I definitely related to the 3/4am thoughts and the notion that we eat to fill a void which I have definitely found myself doing.
I didn't expect to read this book so fast as it only took me 30 minutes to read. Even though this is classed as a poetry collection, I found that a lot of the pages were one or two line quotes which felt very generic and that might be found if you were searching for motivational quotes or meaningful quotes etc. I want to read poetry when a book is sold as a poetry collection but I felt like this book just didn't quite hit that criteria. I couldn't find any real poetic techniques used and the fact that every other page is blank made it feel like they were just there to fill out the book a bit. A book that is 176 pages that is barely filled with words was a little underwhelming.
Having said this I respect the topics that where written about and thought the feelings were captured very well. I recommend this to readers that are looking for a very quick read that enjoy the short insta poetry style.