David Jonathan Jones

THUG: Two Tales in Poésie Noire (The Red Salon, 2019)
ISBN 978-1-7335979-6-8
by David Jonathan Jones
Paperback; 129 pages. $16.

(Available at Amazon.)

Thug is a unique and singular work with nothing to quite compare it with. It consists of two full-bodied poems. The first, “Thug,” is a story set in a nameless city in the contemporary wasteland of the present age. It utilizes the noir genre of writing and attitude, and adopts the terseness and pithy economy of language inherent in hard-boiled detective fiction by its use of rendering the story in a lengthy haiku sequence – and it works seamlessly. The tale is soaked in jazz and drugs of the beat world which blurs the lines between poetry and prose. This poem is an event of originality not to be missed by any serious poetry lover.

The second poem in this book, “The Gullveig Working,” is also written in the noir idiom but is presented in free verse. It describes a magical working exploring the nature of obsession and addiction. The poetry has a dynamic lyricism that is fast-paced and incisive and sustains to the very last line. Both of these works open a new door of possibilities in the realm of poetry.