A review by drewbagelz
Aniara: An Epic Science Fiction Poem by Harry Martinson

challenging dark reflective sad tense slow-paced

3.25

I recently saw the 2018 movie and loved it so much, I wanted to read the source material. The problem is, I don't really "get" poetry, sometimes to a degree where I literally can't understand what I'm reading at all. Even having seen the film, a lot of the words on these pages just did not translate to anything remotely conceivable to my brain. Some of that is due to Martinson's use of unique vocabulary invented specifically for Ariana, but a lot of it was not. I'm giving it a gentleman's 3 because it's not the book's fault that I'm not literate enough to comprehend its form, and I did enjoy the parts I could understand, but I really wish this would have resonated with me the way the movie did. There was a "Notes" section at the end of the book that explained some of the terminology and I wish I had known it was there before finishing all the cantos, but I don't think it would have made a huge difference.