10-PAK-8: The Long Poems continues Candice James's acclaimed series of long-form poems presented in a distilled, contemplative layout. Each poem unfolds across short, breath-sized pages, allowing the reader to enter the imagery slowly and fully. This eighth volume deepens the metaphysical terrain James has cultivated across the series, offering ten expansive poems that explore identity, memory, mortality, and the shifting boundaries between the seen and unseen.
In ""Arrival,"" the reader boards a bus at the end of the world and slips into a dreamlike journey where harmonicas play without musicians, childhood melodies echo through empty air, and the self dissolves into starlight. ""Ocean and Rain"" moves through time's erosion, longing, and the fading music of youth. ""The House I Am"" examines the self as both structure and ghost, a place built and unbuilt by memory, dream, and the inevitability of change.
""A Fractured Cosmos"" navigates the shimmering divide between the self and its ""other,"" blending cosmic imagery with surreal narrative. ""The Violins of Time"" traces the quiet unraveling of promises, seasons, and the fragile music of the heart. In ""Broken-Down Angel,"" a wandering spirit drifts through midnight streets, cabarets of memory, and the icy landscapes of loss. ""Beach of Stone"" contemplates illusion, impermanence, and the cyclical nature of existence as stone becomes sand and sand becomes stone again. ""Turning to Diamond"" explores transformation, karma, and the many selves carried across a lifetime. ""Ghosting"" reflects on the ghosts we meet, the ghosts we create, and the realization that we ourselves are often the ghost. ""The Disappearing"" closes the collection with a meditation on mortality, acceptance, and the final quieting of the self.
James's voice is cinematic, metaphysical, and emotionally resonant. Her imagery moves like weather-drifting, dissolving, reforming-while her language anchors the reader in landscapes both familiar and otherworldly. 10-PAK-8 stands as a powerful addition to a unique poetic series, offering a journey through the liminal spaces where worlds overlap and the soul reveals its many faces.
