Not really my cup of tea, but surely an enjoyable reading!
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Loved this collection so much however, the format I read it in made it a bit unreadable. I found it very difficult to figure it out. I decided to get a physical copy of it from the library which finally helped me understand what I was reading. I loved our this collection explored varied themes from family, sexuality to mental health conditions.

Thanks to #Netgalley for making this book available to me.

I received an eARC copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book gave feels. This poetry collection gave experience, mixed themes, mixed emotions, delivered hyper-reality, all wrapped up in what I can best describe as confusion. I saw its potential; I know it took a lot of time to achieve its final form, I felt it fascinating and breathtaking, but in the end - it did not work for me. I dropped it at 55%; I wanted to like it, but I guess we weren't a match.

It was an enjoyable book. What caught my attention was the title, and the book did not disappoint although the format was not the best (I imagine the physical copy to be a better reading experience), but that is not the author's fault so it won't affect my rating. I do love darker, raw poems, so I found it enjoyable and emotional. I will definitely check out more of the author's work in the future.

This is a really beautiful collection. Some of it was too experimental and esoteric for my taste. I’ve been told my writing is rather plain, which is likely why I tend to gravitate to more direct voices than overly ornate text. It’s what speaks to me. There were some very moving confessional pieces and a number of philosophical musings that I loved deeply. It had a fairly brooding tone overall. Worth a read if you’re interested in themes of modernity, queerness, impermanence, intimate partner violence, and being an adopted child.

I really enjoyed this short book of poems, I do feel like I would have enjoyed it more as a physical format rather than my kindle app due to the layout of the poems etc.
I particularly enjoyed starfucker and a fable for my children, and the reference that was made to frankenstein in the witching hour.

Such a unique and interesting collection of poems, very dark and raw and real, Very abstract and there were some poems I felt completely a part of but then there were a few that lost me, The formatting was also so hard to read and I did have to end up skipping a few pages as they were just unreadable for me.

One of my favourite lines was “My darling, you are never broken, you have just simply changed shape.” Really thought provoking and also gave me a weird sense of acceptance and affirmation.

Overall I would recommend, especially if you love experimental poetry and dark topics!

I received a Net Galley ARC for this book in a very disrupted form. More than half of the pages were not in a readable state. I could only read parts of book. I don't think it is justifiable to review a book based on the very little parts that I could read.
Though I was really touched by those parts, I wish the book format was proper to truly appreciate the writing.

"I cannot promise you will come out a changed person after reading this book, but I hope you do, because after writing it, I'm a changed person."
Wow, that was a wild ride. And I have to say that, yes, I indeed am a changed person after finishing There was Histrionic Laughter at the Clown’s Cadaver. The author says the book is the combination of a dream journal, a poetry collection and an autobiography and I have to say that's the best way of defining it. Every word was so personal, so unique that I felt like I was reading someone else's most precious quotes and that's 100% one of the best parts of the book. Reading it on the Kindle in other hand was not that good of a choice. The organization of the poems ended up confusing and it turned out really confusing to read some of the poetries. I might have not liked all of the poems but the ones that I did really hit differently. Thanks to the Publisher and Netgalley for the digital copy.

3.5/5.0

Unique book that is far outside my normal reading preferences, but I'm very happy that I stepped outside of my comfort zone. The title alone got me to read this and it far exceeded my expectations. Very good book that I highly recommend reading - best if it's a physical version (which I purchased purely for re-reading). Surreal and really opens one's mind.

This collection of poetry was incredibly unique, and I am still trying to work out the best way to review it. I love poetry and analysing various texts for meaning(s), and this collection took things to a whole new level.

Admittedly the PDF version on both the reader and in Kindle had some issues with formatting, but once I got past that and read the roughly 80% that I could, it was interesting to see how Sidiriv utilized typography, format, and general breaks form the “rules” to show intent and convey meaning.

Many of the topics were incredibly personal, making some of them difficult to access and connect with, but the skill and talent with words is undeniable, and so many individual lines jumped out and stuck with me. I would be curious to revisit this work in hard copy and certainly to see any of Sidirov’s future work.

i did not finish at abt 15% - felt that i would only dislike it more as i went further. I almost stopped at the preface itself. It felt too undercooked yet. There are some nice things in here and I do see potential, but it feels like it needs more grounding.

For me, the book didn't feel right. The writing was horribly chaotic - why would you write almost an entire book u s i n g t h i s f o r a w r i t i n g s t y l e?!
It hurts the eyes, it slows the brain and I don't want to guess words while reading!
Loved the cover, but didn't like the book. The topics were really uncomfortable to me - I am not really big on religious talk, so that was a bother. And like I said, the writing really drove me insane.

I received a free ARC by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Whoa. This was such a raw and gripping and emotional collection.

I love poetry and N. Alexsander Sirdov has a way with words that eats and your heart and tugs at your emotions.

If you like poetry an have feelings, pick this up.

📚 There was Histrionic Laughter at the Clowns Cadaver by N. Alexsander Sidirov 📚
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Calling this book a modern poetry collection feels somewhat reductive considering the novel and avant-garde imagery, its ominous and often omnipresent eye, and ultimately the transcendental climax that is difficult to compare to other works in the genre. Each poem in this book has a specific place along an emotional odyssey that blisters with novelty and an almost lynchian flare for the surreal and absurd. Whether you ultimately enjoy his words you will decide, but one certainly can never forget them. This is the matter that dreams are made of...
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This was such an interesting poetry collection. Honestly the cover is what caught my eyes because it’s something I’ve never seen. It definitely explains it all. It’s such a unique and interesting book. It took me awhile to get my thoughts together because I honestly didn’t really know what to think.

It was definitely a fast and short read. I had fun getting through it because it was quick. I really enjoyed the modern experience the author brought into this. Each poem was so different and unique. I would definitely check them out. I’ve never read anything close to this. I seriously have been sitting on this for days. These poems definitely are deep, but I just can’t even explain how I feel about this collection.

Yes I enjoyed it!! I actually read this on NetGalley and didn’t enjoy the font layout. However, the author was kind enough to contact me and send a physical cover. Although it was a bit still difficult to understand, I would still check this poetry collection out. Keep in mind there are some challenging moments and deep thoughts. I’m glad I read it.

**Huge thank you to the author for sending me a physical copy so I can have a pleasant experience.**
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Rating: 4/5 ⭐️
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Imagery, emotion, and artistic relevance brim over in this collection. I found much to enjoy about the reflections of N. Alexsander Sidirov, and much to keep thinking about.

This book was free and sent to me as an ARC on Netgalley. However, all opinions are of my own.
Before we go into the context of the book - it’s just worth noting that the layout was weird.. I hated the writing style. It was continuous and at one point I had to skim over the words because they were displayed / l i k e t h i s.
Secondly trigger warnings: I know I’ll miss some but in this there were A LOT. Rape, sex talk, sex talk about God, suicide, mental illness, gay sex without full consent, un-pleasurable sex. sexual assault as a child & self neglect.
For this book, I won’t be rating it or commenting further.

I really wanted to like this collection. Described as "an emotional odyssey" "Oscillating between lyrical poetry, dramatic, confessional, and abstract" and tagged as LGBTQIA, it sounded interesting, and I was excited to read it.

I was disappointed.

In retrospect, the grammatically incorrect title should probably have warned me off, but I was seduced by the publisher's description and the enticing cover. Please remind me never to judge a book by its cover again.

It wasn't all bad. There was some evocative imagery, which worked best when the writer wasn't trying too hard or over-using the thesaurus. I felt the strongest parts of the collection were its descriptions of the struggles of a young queer person.

However, the good aspects were overshadowed by so many flaws. These essentially all boil down to poor English, but by way of examples:

1. Using less well-known words does not make something good poetry
Often it is as though the writer has used a thesaurus and replaced the most appropriate word with one that is less common, but also less apt. The word "satiate" is used not only in one of the poems but also in the introduction. Because it is such an odd choice of word, this jumps out at the reader and sticks in the memory (but not in a good way). "until finally / gold precipitates" was another gem amongst countless other examples. In one poem, all of the following appear within the space of 43 words: lucifugous, penumbral, crepuscular, ceurlean, scintillating, aureate, undulates, coruscant. Yes, I do know what they mean, but it's too much.

2. Nor does juxtaposing words that you think sound good or impressive
"hypodermic tentacles" - what?! Yes, jellyfish tentacles have microscopic hypodermic "needles" attached to them, but it is not the tentacles themselves that are hypodermic (and although the image is entertaining, I somehow doubt this was the author's intention)
By the way, if you are going to use a word, it helps to know what it means. "My mouth ... whets" is nonsense on at least two levels. First, "whet" is a transitive verb, and therefore cannot be done in isolation: You have to whet something. Secondly, it means to sharpen (literally or metaphorically), so even if the verb did have an object, it is difficult to see how any sense could be made of the phrase as a whole. And what, I wonder, is "the hour of nigh' noon"?

3. Neither does alliteration or word-play - although admittedly some of this wasn't bad, such as:
"the sun cycle follows suit the suits follow greenbacks. / dead presidents follow in pursuit in stacks and racks and stacks"
"a fickle feline, a feral thing"
"resembling only a waning sliver of myself / the rest eroded by rage / and moonbeam"

4.Nor does arranging your poem in an unusual shape or using random italics or unconventional spacing.
Perhaps the most annoying thing about this book was the letter spacing in some of the poems. I understand that this was deliberate, but in the vast majority of the poems it added no discernible value, and simply made those poems more difficult to read (this may have been the intention, but it was just frustrating, particularly when the poems did not ultimately merit such close reading).

5. Actually, I take that back. The spacing was not the most annoying thing. This accolade goes to the appalling grammar. What is the poetic purpose of the comma in "The silk sewn image of, two damselflies dancing"? The most basic grammar-check software could have picked this up, even if the human proof-readers were not capable of doing so. Likewise, why the apostrophe after "nigh"?
And why, oh why did no one put an apostophe in "the clowns cadaver"?
And why did no one remove the apostrophe from "in it's carnal bloom"? "crawl to the shatter of it's light"? "we might want to hear it but it's cause" (what is that even supposed to mean)? "and it's chin pointing north"? "extraterrestial in it's majesty"?

Contrary to what the above comments may suggest, I feel bad about giving such a critical review. The writer clearly spent a long time working on this collection and presumably put his soul into doing so. A couple of the poems had potential - notably "Shelter Melter" and some of the TV channels. But for the myriad grammatical errors, this would have been a solid, middle-of-the-road three stars for me. Those dragged it down to two. However, because I am feeling generous and because I suspect I am not the primary target audience for this collection, and the experimental aspect may appeal more to others, I will leave the additional star and hope that someone sees fit to do some proper proofreading sooner rather than later.

Edited review: The author went out of his way to contact me, and inform me that the weird composition of everything in the digital edition of his work that I had read, was a technical mistake. He asked me to consider giving the book another try, and even sent me a kindle edition as a gift. I could not open the gift because of copyright issues, but I decided to find another way, since clearly the author was working hard and had been kind. I read the pdf of the work on my computer, and it was a lot better than on my kindle.
Anyways.
Sidirov talks about a lot of relatable and relevant topics in his poetry, like being queer, fitting in, identity, love and more. I really liked when he talked about his childhood, and the whole "TV part" was really good, and a unique idea. English is not my first language, so I sometimes struggled with the use of uncommon words, but Sidirov definitely has a sense of stringing words together that sound good, and so I was able to mostly enjoy even when I didn't understand very well. I also particularly enjoyed the poems that mentioned the ocean, I don't know why I love those, but maybe because the feeling of drowning is relatable to me.

'we were just waiting for hope to return with a pack of cigarettes.'

This book really appealed to me because the title was darn intriguing, the cover was fairly surreal (and I just watched 'It II' and therefore have clowns on the brain), and because I love poetry.

Unfortunately, my copy had a lot of formatting errors and was hard to read in so many places that I ended up skimming a lot. I think maybe checking out a hard back copy again in future would help, as the issues could entirely be technological on my end.