What makes you love a novel?
For me, it’s got to have poetry in prose.
Sure, I love a good story. But it’s in the telling—in the sounds of the words, and in the echoes and depths of expression—that my love for a novel is born.
Our new novel from T. S. Poetry Press uses a Coleridge poem as a frame. But that’s not the only poetry. Otherside also contains “poetry in prose.”
Something to love.
Here are a few of my favorite poetic passages from Otherside…
“Sheen and poise, a sculpture of aristocracy like an engine’s heart, and anything she pleased—given to her—while she remained untouchable.”
—Dee’s thoughts about Jan
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“… at the end of that long, impossible tunnel, like a faintly waving mirage behind mist.”
—Jason’s private thoughts
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“… realizing with the onset of wakefulness that the world was ending in slow-motion—wishing for a word, someone to acknowledge that his grief was really grief.”
—Dee’s private thoughts
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“He nodded, and turned, and walked into the blistering yellow-whiteness of the cast-down sun.”
—narrative about Jason
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“…piece by piece fitting themselves into the space they’d carved out for themselves and fought for against agonizing tides just to keep.”
—narrative about Marla and Jason
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“Somewhere, outside the cabins, outside the starsteel can that was their only protection, was the endless nothing, cold and deadly and dark.”
—narrative about Jason, Marla, and Dee
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“She could program the machines to fire off shots in a great glowing green curve which would show like a gilded flower in the computer formula…”
—narrative about Marla
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“The old saying is that it’s only those who can steer their ship who find land. Now, without remembering the patterns of the stars—how will you ever steer by them?”
—Jan to Jason
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“…and sometimes within that void, like a pinprick, he would find the quiet of the woods behind the house on Earth, before it all.”
—narrative about Jason
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About the Author of Otherside
In addition to Otherside, Sara Barkat is the author of the National Indie Excellence Awards finalist The Shivering Ground & Other Stories. She is also the illustrator of two graphic novels: The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Colour out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft. Sara adores art, sailing, random coding projects, and quantum physics. You can find her at sarabarkat.com or drawing mostly daily at sadbook.substack.com
Featured photo by Getty Images, Unsplash license.
a novel that frames itself using “the rime of the ancient mariner”
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