I was drawn into the cover of this one firstly, and then by the description. I’m trying to read more by LGBTQ+ authors and I do enjoy poetry so this fit well with my current reads.
One thing is that it’s very experimental in style, which gaps between letters, sentences and on one occasion a page of overlapping text. This doesn’t bother me like some other reviews I’ve seen, it only adds to the emotion conveyed and the urgency of the words.
Exploring themes such as family dynamics, sexuality, mental health, and sexual assault there are some slight trigger warnings. I find it hard to review poetry because it’s so subjective, and with this being a memoir type book as well it’s double hard. I did enjoy it, I would definitely read more from the author.
My only downfall with it (and this is all on me), hence not a full five stars, is that it felt way too smart for me to be reading. I felt at times I needed a dictionary beside me to fully understand what was going on.
Thank you to NetGalley for the copy in exchange for a review!

A different, unique and painful reading. I totally connected with some poems but others were were confusing, like out of place or context.
I suggest reading the physical version because the kindle one was messy and so hard to follow.

{Digital copy provided by NetGallery}
This is a truly unique work of poetry, and literature in general. It questions the nature of life, love, and modern existence, all while being very queer in the best ways.

Parts like

“I still have dreams
Where you are tearing me apart
Quartered in the quarters
Putting horse before the cart
You are throwing all your pearls at the swine - -
I think that’s me
I am picking them all up
Because a girl has got to eat
Now I am throwing stones
at the locked window
of this guy I used to be”

and

“so I am sitting here on the edge of a park bench and oblivion
just waiting for the moment when the usher lets me in”

and

“and then briefly I shake myself
from the opiate high of apathy
to look for god again
in a jello pudding recipe”

will stay with me for a long time, and I have underlined and bookmarked countless more.

As others have commented, the formatting if the digital copy is hard to read, but with zooming in I was able to combat that a little.

While I enjoyed a lot of lines, passages and pages, this collection was vague and disconnected at times, with some things working for me and some distinctly not.
Some pages just seemed pointless and annoying, vulgar at times, not always in a tasteful way, or abstraction for abstraction’s sake. Definitely more than worth a read though!

While reading There was Histrionic Laughter at the Clowns Cadaver, I felt like I was riding a rollercoaster that was defying the laws of physics and gravity. Every poem slams you into a new emotional state and feeling. Sidirov switches between lyrical pieces to simple narratives explaining a moment in his life. I loved it! Every page was unexpected and nothing like the rest. I do believe I would need to read this many times to fully understand each poem, however, I believe that's the case with all poetry. Sidirov did a spectacular job placing a smattering of stories about his own experiences in the "modern poetry" language that provided relatable insight to his life. Specifically, the poems "This Land is not my Homeland and my Homeland is not my Home" and "T.S. ABRAXAS" hit me the hardest.

This collection of poetry was UNREAL to say the least. Every single page filled me with new emotion. The secret poems and messages throughout made me feel like I was on a scavenger hunt.

As a gay trans man, the lgbt themes of this book hit hard. Specifically when he speaks of the people he met during his time in the shelters.

My favorite poems were We're all Just Dancing on Something's Grave, S h e l t e r M e l t e r, SIGNS, and God is on Their Death Bed and They've Requested You by Name.

The only downside I had was that due to the formatting, some of it was hard to read.

This is a must have for any poetry lover.

poetic, lyrical and fascinating. It definitely needs to be read more than once to be pondered appreciatively, That can be a pain since I believe the more easily consumed and accessible your work is, the more beautiful the poetry but there's joy and freedom in seeing someone so freely express themself, even if others can't fully grasp its depth.

“I should have known everything good died when blockbuster did.”
Man, this line got me. Like totally got me. Times were so much simpler then. So much more carefree. But no looking back. This work of art created by N. Alexsander Sidirov,
is to me, an ode to life and to learning and to moving forward. I’ll admit, some of it went past me or through me and I’m not sure I totally got the intended meaning but it meant something to me.
The formatting for the ebook was a bit off but that didn’t really matter to me. I would like to read the print book as the author intended it to be read, though. I read this work in one sitting and took it all in one big gulp. I think you should, too.
Definitely a unique voice I’m eager to read more from - thank you, N. Alexsander Sidirov, for sharing a bit of yourself with us.

“That suitcase is heavy and where you’re going you’ll need to pack light”

Thank you to N. Alexsander Sidirov and #NetGallery for an ebook of #ThereWasHistrionicLaughterattheClownsCadaver for an honest review. Review will be posted on NetGallery, Goodreads, and Facebook.

P.S. Love the cover art!

Perhaps this book needs to be read on paper. The formatting was borderline unreadable; there were several pages on the pdf version that I unfortunately had to skip because the font was so tall and narrow and oddly spaced that my poor eyeballs couldn't parse the letters.

This writer has talent, and is certainly very confident in that; that's not by any means a criticism. More people should believe in what they do, and I think it's admirable that this author is so bold in their work; this book breaks more rules than it follows, and that's no bad thing.

However, I do think this book is so very personal and so specifically written as catharsis that it loses a lot of readability. It's so abstract - really, 119 pages of loosely connected ideas, diaphanous images and incredibly opaque metaphor - that it's very, very hard to get a grip on it. I love poetry. I love abstraction. But here, there were whole pages at a time where I felt completely adrift, and unable to connect to the work at all. Abstract ideas work if they're rooted in something just tangible enough for the abstraction to hold meaning, and these poems didn't do that for me. The author also desperately needs to stop relying on a thesaurus; for example, 'I will not stop / for bouts of amour / as I have in the / lucifugous past / the waiting hours penumbral', or 'my auroral blue pools / scintillating / with rain'. I know what all of those words mean, but that, as an image, is so difficult to access that it fails to be evocative. I will say that the later poems don't suffer so much from this, but the first half of the book is heavy with it, and it becomes a real chore.

The poems that work best are, in my very subjective opinion, the simpler ones, where Sidirov relies less on showing off his vocabulary. Azu's Wedding was probably my favourite; I enjoyed the closeness it invoked, the intimacy, the shifting nature of their relationship. I also liked the surreal absurdity of a lot of the imagery; There Are No Monkeys Here was quite delightfully weird, and one of the poems I'd quite happily sit and analyse. Sidirov's decision not to use page numbers and to instead label each page with a word / phrase which makes up a poem is brilliant, and, perhaps a little ironically, the poem that these page 'numbers' made was by far my favourite in the whole book, and one which will linger.

I think this author has talent, and could do a lot with it; I just feel like perhaps this book was written more for them than for us, and that's fine, but it certainly makes reviewing (and indeed reading) it a little tricky.