BOOK REVIEW
Upon opening A Bittersweet Dream, by Anthony Bolton, the book is poetry and prose indulged with expressful emotions. With strong lines and complementary illustrations, it’s a book that is felt when reading showcasing a courageous and fearless storyline.
The poetry collection is written over six chapters exploring feelings of love, heartbreak, and longing. Each poem is written with excellence that can in-turn be a stand-alone poem in itself, as well as being part of this book.
“My chase for you has now come to a bittersweet end,” Bolton writes as the first chapter ‘Shattered Memories’ comes to an end creating strong feelings that linger and imprint on the reader’s mind.
As the book progresses, Bolton phenomenally brought up so many intense emotions with different themes but it all came together wonderfully with solid storytelling. There is a good choice of metaphors and similes conveying his storytelling with brilliance getting his point across in a simple manner.
Discussing heartbreak and hardships with a realistic look into issues we face today, Bolton did not shine away from talking about cruelty, global warming, and more in a heart touching way that will get the reader thinking. As it includes the greed of mankind in a thought-provoking manner, it truly tells parts of everyday struggles in this world that we might not be aware of.
It’s a truly superb masterpiece written over six chapters with a different narrative in each section that towards the end, it appears more hopeful and everything experienced was processed and learned, coming out with a deeper understanding.
Anthony Bolton is a self published writer who writes mainly about the world around him. He began to write at an early age and was heavily influenced by the many influential writers of the past. He became profoundly fascinated by the possibility of words taking some form of resonance with readers. He strongly believes that in the near future, our bones will be buried, and nobody will be around to remember us; only words will be left behind.
Words by Danielle Holian
INTERVIEW
What, or who, inspired you to start writing?
There are over a myriad of writers and poets and artists that have influenced myself to start writing, as they can also be seen on the front cover of my latest poetry collection, A Bittersweet Dream. From right to left its: Berryman, Nabokov, Bukowski, Wordsworth, Sylvia, Tennyson and Nipsey. And directly above the sinking boat is Dante in red. I purposely made Berryman bigger because he is my biggest influence. He is the main poet who rendered myself interested in poetry in the first place. Namely his work of poetry, 77 Dream Songs, (without the racial implications of course), is, in my opinion, a masterpiece in poetry. I always tell everyone, ‘if you want to read good poetry please read the work of Berryman’s.’ I never was really interested in poetry until I read his work. Berryman has such a profound, unique way of communicating his most inner thoughts and fears and so forth, through his poetry. His poetry was then deemed as confessional poetry. Essentially what I like about Berryman is that when you begin to read the dream songs, you are basically entering into his life, and I try to replicate this effect with my poetry collection as when you begin to read it you are entering into my life.
And what made you want to publish your book, a Bittersweet Dream?
I published this collection of poetry to shed light on the issues of the world that often don’t receive much attention such as climate change and animal abuse. Often people eat animal derived foods and they fail to acknowledge the victims involved in their eating choices or the standard practices in slaughterhouses. Also many of the people don’t know that climate change and animal abuse is actually interlinked, which is something I explore in this collection. But I didn’t want this collection to be entirely harsh to read so I balanced it with three chapters on love and three chapters that explore the subjects of success, animal cruelty and climate change.
Why is the collection titled a Bittersweet Dream?
I named it that because essentially from my belief of life in general, our life can be seen as a bittersweet dream, because in life we invariably have the balance of bitterness as well as sweetness in our life. Many might contradict me on that because a famous philosopher by the name of Jean-Paul Sartre once interviewed stated that he never experienced a day of despair in his life. Perhaps his life from his perspective was full of sweetness. I guess we do have moments in life that are like waves of bitterness and sweetness, but life is either bitter or sweet depending on your perspective. Also many of the poems in the collection refer to dreams and essentially all of them refer to the quote by Carl Jung at the beginning of the collection where he states, ‘Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious.’ So each time water is mentioned I am referring to the subconsciousness. Dreams usually are easy to forget and that is a major theme in this collection. That’s why most of the poems are centred around forgetting. Near the end of the collection you learn that the dreamer of the poems is in a coma, dying by all the subjects previously mentioned. The dreamer is dying from a bittersweet dream. Edgar Allan Poe once said in a poem, ‘All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
And finally, what advice would you give to aspiring writers?
In Philip Levine’s memoir The Bread of Time, he states that Berryman’s advice to all poets was to, invariably aim to write the poem that you cannot. Berryman also states and I quote, ‘Write everything that occurs to you; it’s the only way to discover where your voice will come from. And never be in a hurry. Writing poetry is not like running the four hundred meters.’ Levine then comments on what he meant, ‘In other words, go as fast as you can but don’t be in a hurry; we have a lifetime to master this thing, and with our gifts it would take a lifetime.’