Speak, Shade

Raymond Gibson's sparse, intense, lovely, and ghostly chapbook, Speak, Shade, is born of light and sight. Each poem within is a candle-orange rays of illumination, flickering brief and breathless. Gibson reveals tapers of timeless beauty, yet cautions us not to fly too close to the sun. Beginning with "The Cataracts" and ending with "Blink" and "Blind Timescapes," the poet dares us to see what we ordinarily try to shield our eyes from, while offering us salve and salvation for all of the "red absences." Using every color of the spectrum, especially the spectral ones, Gibson always returns to light and the perception of light, casting white-hot beams on our fragility and futility. In this book you will find little wounds, tiny licks of flame, alternately burning and melting over the glowing (and majestic) fires of our lives.

—Cin Hochman, Editor-in-Chief, First Literary Review-East